Southern Baptist Convention leader Richard Land called Mormonism “the fourth Abrahamic faith” in a discussion of controversy over Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s religious affiliation.

Land, president of the SBC Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, told Bloomberg’s “Political Capital” with Al Hunt he regards Romney’s church as neither a Christian religion nor a cult.

“I consider it the fourth Abrahamic religion–Judaism being the first, Christianity being the second, Islam being the third and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints being the fourth,” he said. “Most evangelicals, certainly the ones I know–the polls show more than half–do not believe that Mormonism is an orthodox, Trinitarian, Apostolic, traditional Christian faith.”

While most observers believe it will be difficult to convince conservative evangelicals to vote for a member of a church that many consider an extra-Christian cult, Land has said from the start he doesn’t think Romney’s church affiliation is a “deal breaker,” but only Romney can address it.

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This, sadly, is the sort of tendentious, self-important, sloppily reasoned book that gives feminism a bad name.

With “The Terror Dream,” Susan Faludi has taken the momentous subject of 9/11 and come to the conclusion that it led to … an assault on the freedom and independence of American women. In the wake of 9/11, she argues, the great American cultural machine churned out a myth meant to “restore the image of an America invulnerable to attack” ”” “the illusion of a mythic America where women needed men’s protection and men succeeded in providing it.”

She contends that there was a “peculiar urge to recast a martial attack as a domestic drama, attended by the disappearance and even demonization of independent female voices” and that there was a “beatification of the ideal post-9/11 American woman” as “undemanding, uncompetitive, and most of all dependent” ”” a woman who “didn’t just want a man in her life” but “needed one.”

These efforts on Ms. Faludi’s part to use the terrorist attacks of 9/11 as an occasion to recycle arguments similar to those she made a decade and a half ago in her best-selling book “Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women” (1991) feel forced, unpersuasive and often utterly baffling.

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There is a strong argument for reforming the Church from within rather than through schism and we have a practicable model for pastoral care and social action. In closing, permit me to highlight three areas of Simeon’s ministry which have greatly challenged me in my reflections and which, if we were to follow them, would have the potential to rejuvenate our ministry.

1 Giving priority to an effective devotional lifestyle, with a commitment to spending ”˜quality’ time in Bible study and prayer.

2 A commitment to living a holy life, recognizing the need of the renewing and cleansing power of the Holy Spirit in our daily lives.

3 That, along with Simeon, our understanding of the purpose of our preaching would be: ”˜Sir, we would see Jesus’ (John 12:21).

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From here:

FiF Assembly Resolution on TEC
Oct 24, 2007

The FiF National Assembly, having heard Bishop Jack Iker’s Report, passed nem. con. the following emergency Resolution on the situation in The Episcopal Church:

Resolution 2007/09

This Assembly notes with concern that the actions of the House of Bishops of The Episcopal Church consistently fail to match its words and assurances. The Assembly cannot agree with the Joint Standing Committee of the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates’ Meeting that the response to the Windsor Report and the Dar-es-Salaam communiqué was adequate or honourable.

Proposed by the Reverend Dr Geoffrey Kirk

Seconded by the Reverend Prebendary Sam Philpott

An independent forensic audit requested by a breakaway Episcopal congregation found no wrongdoing by the Rev. Donald Armstrong, accused of stealing nearly $400,000 from Grace Church and St. Stephen’s Parish.

There was no theft or tax fraud found, according to a statement about the audit released Tuesday. The audit, conducted for Grace Church CANA vestry and Armstrong’s attorney Dennis Hartley, was done by Robert D. Johnson, a Colorado Springs certified public accountant.

His audit found that six counts against Armstrong presented by the Episcopal Diocese of Colorado in an ecclesiastical court had reasonable explanations and that financial transactions had been approved by parish officials.

“I am grateful for this report, for its clarity and completeness in addressing the false accusations against me and our vestry by the Diocese of Colorado, its Bishop, and their representatives,” Armstrong said in a statement.

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The Anglican Church in Australia plans to put the names of clergy who engage in extramarital affairs on a register of sex offenders.

The morally conservative Sydney Diocese of the Church is behind the move, which will require married clergy from Iraq to have their names included on the register even if they are only accused of infidelity.

Clerical chastity ”” a ban on extra-marital affairs ”” is already in the voluntary code of conduct for clergy. The inclusion of extramarital affairs on the Church’s register of sexually inappropriate conduct would block the renewal of licences for ministers.

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They are devoted foster parents with an unblemished record of caring for almost 30 vulnerable children.

But Vincent and Pauline Matherick will this week have their latest foster son taken away because they have refused to sign new sexual equality regulations.

To do so, they claim, would force them to promote homosexuality and go against their Christian faith.

The 11-year-old boy, who has been in their care for two years, will be placed in a council hostel this week and the Mathericks will no longer be given children to look after.

The devastated couple, who have three grown up children of their own, became foster parents in 2001 and have since cared for 28 children at their home in Chard, Somerset.

Earlier this year, Somerset County Council’s social services department asked them to sign a contract to implement Labour’s new Sexual Orientation Regulations, part of the Equality Act 2006, which make discrimination on the grounds of sexuality illegal.

Officials told the couple that under the regulations they would be required to discuss same-sex relationships with children as young as 11 and tell them that gay partnerships were just as acceptable as heterosexual marriages.

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Update: David Fischler has this posted with commentary over at Reformed Pastor.

For the first time since 2003, delegates to convention in the Diocese of Southwest Florida rejected a resolution which would have allowed congregations to redirect apportionment payments away from the program budget of the General Convention.

Similar resolutions had passed at the 2003-2005 conventions. Last year, a procedural error kept the resolution from being considered but diocesan council approved a mechanism to implement the procedure anyway.

Bishop Dabney Smith used his Oct. 20 convention address, his first as diocesan, to steer a new course for Southwest Florida, one with an emphasis on mission, outreach and young adults. He also elaborated on a line item in the budget providing for an assistant bishop.

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Alabama has became the first state in the union to approve a textbook for a course about the Bible in its public schools, and its surprisingly uncontroversial decision may prove to be a model for others.

According to Dr. Anita Buckley Commander, the Alabama Director of Classroom Improvement, there was no opposition to the October 11 vote by the state Board of Education to include The Bible and Its Influence on the state’s list of accepted textbooks. The Board held a hearing on the issue and no-one showed up; the book was approved by a vote of 8-0.

The textbook is a product of the Bible Literacy Project, founded and run by Chuck Stetson, a conservative Christian New York-based equity fund executive. Assessing scripture and its subsequent influence on literature, art, philosophy and political culture, it was specifically designed to avoid the Constitution’s church-state barriers. Although the text, which has been on the market for two years, is now taught in 163 schools in 35 states, no state had previously endorsed it.

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Recently, Dawkins published The God Delusion (reviewed in the TLS, January 19). As McGrath says, this book marks a significant departure. Dawkins is no longer an atheist whose main aim is to make evolutionary biology accessible to the general public: he is now a preacher whose mission is to convert religious readers to atheism. The book has a strident and aggressive tone, and a cavalier attitude to evidence that tells against its thesis that religion is the root of all evil. This has provoked McGrath to write a short volume exposing its flaws. The Dawkins Delusion? is credited to both Alister McGrath and his wife Joanna Collicutt McGrath, who is a lecturer in psychology of religion at Heythrop College, London. But the extent of her contribution is not made clear, and the book is written in the first person singular “for historical and stylistic reasons”. This makes it difficult to interpret the autobiographical statements. In this review I shall follow the authors’ convention and refer to “McGrath” in the masculine singular.

McGrath says that he is completely baffled by the hostility that Dawkins now displays to religion. But surely two recent phenomena explain the heightened shrillness of Dawkins’s atheism. The first is the rise of Christian fundamentalism in the United States, which endangers the teaching of evolutionary science in schools. The second is the rise of Islamic fundamentalism which has spawned extremist groups of people willing to murder thousands of innocent people even at the cost of their own lives. Of course McGrath is no less horrified than Dawkins by these two developments. But he regards them as largely irrelevant to the evaluation of religion. There can be atheist fundamentalists as well as religious ones, and Dawkins, he claims, shows every sign of being one. Moreover, atheism as well as religion has given rise to massacres, and true religion, as exemplified by Jesus of Nazareth, is hostile to violence.

These points are fairly taken, but I do not think McGrath does justice to the way in which religion, if it does not originate evil, gives it greater power.

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In the early 1980s, the People for the American Way ran a television commercial in which actors were made to say how they preferred their eggs–e.g., scrambled, poached or fried. Everyone should be free, the ad implied, to choose as he wishes: That’s the American way. The punch line, Richard John Neuhaus wrote in “The Naked Public Square” (1984), was aimed at moral majoritarians “who allegedly would impose one way on everybody.” But of course, as Mr. Neuhaus noted, the matters over which the moral majority felt strongly–e.g., abortion and the death penalty–were not exactly comparable to breakfast fare. The ad amounted to a “fatuous trivialization” of moral concerns.

In “Shopping for God,” James B. Twitchell resurrects the spirit of the egg analogy to make an even broader claim. Choosing a religion, he argues, is much like choosing any other product–from breakfast food to beer. He sets out to determine why the “spiritual marketplace” in the U.S. seems so hot right now, and, more pointedly, why evangelical megachu rches have become, well, so mega. His theme can be summed up in one of the book’s smug chapter titles: “Christian Consumers Are Consumers First.”

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San Diego Anglicans blog has set up an open thread re: the wildfires in Southern California, as well as a photo gallery.

If you need to know how various churches in the area have been affected, this is the go to site. As of yesterday evening, there were reports of up to 513,000 people evacuated, 500 homes lost in San Diego County, 800 homes destroyed outside the county.

Please keep the situation in prayer.

After a thorough investigation of several months duration, independent forensic auditor Robert D. Johnson, CPA, P.C. today issued a report surrounding the allegations of financial mismanagement, fraud, and theft at Grace Church & St. Stephen’s. His findings concluded that the Parish rector, the Rev. Donald Armstrong, is innocent of allegations of fraud and theft.

The forensic audit was initiated by the vestry in direct response to the Episcopal Diocese of Colorado’s investigation and presentment against Fr. Armstrong. Since 2003 relations between the conservative parish and the diocese have deteriorated over the revisionist theology of The Episcopal Church, creating a tenuous standing within the mainstream of the biblically faithful worldwide Anglican Communion. Grace Church has chosen to remain in the Anglican Communion.

The Rt. Rev. Robert O’Neill, Episcopal Bishop of Colorado, suspended Fr. Armstrong from ministry within the parish during the Christmas season of last year pending completion of an investigation of financial mismanagement. After several frustrated attempts by the vestry over the course of months to mediate in a situation that it viewed as politically motivated, the vestry determined that the Episcopal Diocese’s investigative and ecclesiastical judicial process was fatally compromised.

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“It should be understood that the Archbishop’s response to Bishop Howe was neither a new policy statement nor a roadmap for the future but a plain response to a very urgent and particular question about clergy in traditionalist dioceses in TEC who want to leave TEC for other jurisdictions, a response reiterating a basic presupposition of what the Archbishop believes to be the theology of the Church.

The primary point was that ”“ theologically and sacramentally speaking ”“ a priest is related in the first place to his/her bishop directly, not through the structure of the national church; that structure serves the dioceses. The diocese is more than a ”˜local branch’ of a national organisation. Dr Williams is clear that, whatever the frustration with the national church, priests should think very carefully about leaving the fellowship of a diocese. The provincial structure is significant, not least for the administration of a uniform canon law and a range of practical functions; Dr Williams is not encouraging anyone to ignore this, simply to understand the theological priorities which have been articulated in a number of ecumenical agreements, and in the light of this not to increase the level of confusion and fragmentation in the church.”

Update: A Living Church article is here.

The transforming rediscovery of a sense of personal and therefore team belief is said to be behind the near miracle of England’s date with South Africa in tonight’s Rugby Union World Cup Final in Paris. They have already said goodbye to Australia and France against all the odds.

Jason Robinson, a committed Christian who will play his last competitive game for England tonight, says that a personal faith in God helps him on the field. His own religious beliefs apparently provide bedrock, a focus, a sense of the wider perspective. Bryan Habana, the South African winger and England’s greatest threat tonight, has also referred to some kind of divine intervention in his dramatic success. Neither claim God will help them to win: but their faith is important to them.

Self belief and inner conviction are not, of course totally reliant on a deeply religious understanding of life and living. Bertrand Russell noted that whilst man is a credulous animal and must believe in something, in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones. But he will always believe in something.

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John Stanley has been trying for years to save people’s souls over cups of coffee, but he can’t drink it.
“I did, until all this immigration stuff started,” Stanley said. “Now I’m too nervous as it is.”

A tall, lean Australian who favors paisley shirts, keeps his long hair tied in a bandanna and rides a donated Harley, Stanley is an unlikely looking Episcopal missionary.

His mission is odder still. A bright, airy coffeehouse, seemingly plucked from the suburbs and dropped among the abandoned storefronts of Aliquippa, Uncommon Grounds is Stanley’s base for starting a spiritual and civic revival of the decaying former mill town.

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The Anglican Province of Central Africa has removed Bishop Nolbert Kunonga of Harare and another diocesan bishop in Zimbabwe from its college of bishops.

In a statement released on Oct. 19, the Dean of the province, Bishop Albert Chama of Northern Zambia, stated that Bishop Kunonga and Bishop Elson Jakazi of Manicaland were no longer bishops of the church and the Sees of Harare and Manicaland had been declared vacant “with immediate effect.” Vicar generals would be appointed to supervise the election of new bishops, Bishop Chama wrote.

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Prominent secular and atheist commentators have argued lately that religion “poisons” human life and causes endless violence and suffering. But the poison isn’t religion; it’s monotheism. The polytheistic Greeks didn’t advocate killing those who worshiped different gods, and they did not pretend that their religion provided the right answers. Their religion made the ancient Greeks aware of their ignorance and weakness, letting them recognize multiple points of view.

There is much we still can learn from these ancient notions of divinity, even if we can agree that the practices of animal sacrifice, deification of leaders and divining the future through animal entrails and bird flights are well lost.

My Hindu students could always see something many scholars miss: The Greek gods weren’t mere representations of forces in nature but independent beings with transcendent powers who controlled the world and everything in it. Some of the gods were strictly local, such as the deities of rivers and forests. Others were universal, such as Zeus, his siblings and his children.

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Israeli Ambassador to the US Sallai Meridor declared Monday that Israel should always be prepared “to preempt, to deter and to defeat if we can” when speaking about the threats facing the country.

Chief among those threats was Iran, said Meridor, who called for a unified international as well as domestic American front to counter the Islamic Republic’s nuclear ambitions.

“This will take a united United States on this matter, that they would not have the illusion today that come January ’09, they [Teheran] have it their own way,” he said, referring to the inauguration of President George W. Bush’s successor, who could potentially change US policy on Iran.

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But this does not mean “anything goes.” By no means!

We are all permanently under the three-fold testing and purifying scrutiny of the refining fire of God’s holiness (Zech 13:9), of the two-edged sword of Scripture (Heb 4:12), of minds transformed by the renewing Spirit (Rom 12:2).

It is on this basis we dare to engage with the complexities of contemporary life around us.

God is God of everything, and we need to have the spiritual maturity, and the depth and breadth of faith, to know how to listen to what he has to say about everything from global security and biotechnology to poverty and development.

We need to be able to engage profoundly, and often critically, with every aspect of human behaviour.

Sometimes we speak of the need to “baptize culture.”

This is no cursory wipe with a damp cloth to produce a superficial religious veneer.

Baptism is the radical transformation that comes through burial with Christ and being raised with him to new life. Every culture must die to the priorities, the loyalties, the idols, of this world; and find new, authentic, life-giving, contemporary expression — transfigured under the Lordship of Jesus, Saviour and Redeemer, who calls us to walk in holiness of life.

This is God’s call to all of us, and to every area of our lives ”“ it is not just about sexuality and the morality of our sexual behaviour.

It is the life of obedience and self-discipline, and often costly self-denial, for, as Paul reminds the Corinthian church, even where “all things are lawful,” it may well be that “not all things are beneficial” (1 Cor 10:23).

All of us would do well to remember this, as we grapple with our diversity — believing it to be a gift of God’s creative abundance.

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This debate is at the heart of the arguments in the Anglican Communion.

For some, being Anglican means belonging to a particular hierarchical Church organisation with a specific set of rules (canons). Those of “Anglo- or Liberal-Catholic” persuasion identify the church by the “Bishop at the altar”. The Bishop has a geographical jurisdiction. This Roman approach was settled at the Council of Whitby in 697. The Celtic Church “lost” the argument for having more flexible ways of working.

Since all Christians in a geographical area were presumed to be in fellowship with the Bishop round his altar, at the Reformation the Church of England accommodated those who took different views on matters that were not required by the scripture. It differed from some of the Reformation churches in distinguishing those matters required scripture, and those cultural matters which were allowable as long as they did not go against scripture. Elizabeth I insisted that she could not make windows into men’s souls. It was enough to subscribe to the articles of faith and the Book of Common Prayer.

But there is more to be said.

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Evangelical voters gathered here yesterday to weigh their political options even as one of their champions, Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, officially withdrew from the 2008 presidential contest, robbing many of their first choice in the Republican nominating battle.

The 2,000 activists attending the Values Voter Summit listened to the candidates, some prayed for guidance, and many expressed deep discomfort with the Republican Party’s two front-runners: former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.

Romney presented himself as the antiabortion, pro-family, pro-religion contender whom Christian conservatives are seeking.

“I’ll oppose taxpayer funding of abortion, oppose partial-birth abortion. I’ll oppose abortion in military clinics. I’ll work to ban embryonic cloning,” Romney promised.

Romney only briefly mentioned his Mormon faith, a source of concern among some Christian groups, saying, “I understand that some people think that they couldn’t support someone of my faith,” then joking that they must be thinking of Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), who is also a Mormon.

Giuliani is scheduled to face the group this morning with a message that emphasizes areas where he agrees with social conservatives, such as national security, taxes and the economy.

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The day after the Montreal vote, representatives of the San Francisco-based Episcopal Diocese of California approved use of rites for the blessing of same-sex couples, opening the way for Bishop Marc Andrus to allow them on a trial basis in Bay Area Episcopal churches.

The resolution both affirmed “the unanimous decision…to refuse to discriminate against partnered gay and lesbian(s)” and deplored “the lack of access to adequate pastoral and ritual care for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in large parts of the Episcopal Church and the refusal of the majority of our bishops to make provision for it.”

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The worldwide Anglican Communion will have to undergo a drastic reformation if it is to stave off a split that would shake the faith to its core, Anglican Archbishop His Grace Drexel Gomez suggested last night as he opened the 107th Session of Synod at Christ Church Cathedral.
The crisis over same sex blessings and openly gay clergymen has been simmering ever since some liberal Episcopalians endorsed both, much to the chagrin of conservative Anglican primates.

“It is clear that the future of the Anglican Communion is unclear at the moment but there can be no doubt that the future shape of Anglicanism will have to undergo significant adjustments if the Communion is to remain intact,” said Archbishop Gomez, who heads The Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Diocese.

The basic issue the church is faced with resolving is its relationship with the Episcopal Church and the rest of the Anglican Communion in light of the consecration of the openly gay Bishop of New Hampshire and the ongoing ambiguity over same sex blessings.

Archbishop Gomez added that in addition, the Communion must make some decisions on the resolution of the situation created by the interventions of certain Primates on behalf of those members of the Episcopal Church who feel alienated on theological grounds.

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When is silence not golden?

Last Thursday, Illinois lawmakers passed legislation that requires all public schools to provide students with a moment of silence at the beginning of the school day.
And, pray tell, how do you think the students are to utilize this moment of silence?

Mandated silent prayer in the public schools? No, of course not, that would be illegal. Instead supporters claim the students can use this moment of silence as either an opportunity for silent prayer or “for silent reflection on the anticipated activities of the day.”

Seriously?

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How has the verdict of the Joint Standing Committee been received around the world? The Church of England Evangelical Council headed by Bishop Benn has dissented from it. Those American Bishops and Dioceses who have been planning to leave The Episcopal Church have not been stopped in their tracks. A large group of African Primates ”“ representative of the people who posed the questions ”“ have said, ”˜on first reading we find it to be unsatisfactory. The assurances made are without credibility and its preparation is severely compromised by numerous conflicts of interest. The report itself appears to be a determined effort to find a way for the full inclusion of The Episcopal Church with no attempt at discipline or change from their prior position.’

Why this dissent from the Joint Committee? It would of course be best to have the whole Dar Es Salaam communiqué, but, failing that, here are the two questions which were put to the Americans for an answer by September 30th:

”˜In particular, the Primates request, through the Presiding Bishop, that the House of Bishops of The Episcopal Church

1.make an unequivocal common covenant that the bishops will not authorise any Rite of Blessing for same-sex unions in their diocese or through General Convention (cf TWR, 143, 144); and
2. confirm that the passing of Resolution B033 of the 75th General Convention means that a candidate for episcopal orders living in a same-sex union shall not receive the necessary consent (cf TWR, 134);
Unless some new consensus on these matters emerges across the Communion (cf TWR, 134).’

We only have time to look at the response to the first request. The wording of the reply certainly does not give the assurance that is sought. The Americans were asked to restrain General Convention from authorising a Rite of Blessing; they could do this, I am told, by exercising what amounts to a veto; but they undertake only to refrain ”˜until General Convention takes further action’, a different proposition altogether. In fact the Primates used, and stressed the word unless, the Bishops replied with ”˜until’. The difference tells us something about the enthusiasm of many Americans to see these developments agreed to. In short the different heart of the Americans and the different heart of their critics is not going to understand these words in the same way even if they were not ambiguous. This is not black-letter dispute over words.
The Primates already knew that no rite has been approved as yet by General Convention; the Americans observe that the majority of bishops ”˜do not make allowance for the blessing of same sex unions.’ But that concedes the very point at issue. This is a practice allowed by some Bishops at least; perhaps many. The consequence is, then, if I understand the situation correctly, at least one American Bishop, though a believer in same-sex blessings, has now forbidden them occurring. He understood that even permitting them was not an option. But they will still occur elsewhere. Thus Bishop Chane of Washington is reported in Washington Window, his own newspaper, as saying, that, ”˜the Diocese of Washington does not have an authorised rite for blessing same-sex relationships. However, he added that the statement passed by the bishops will allow for such blessings to continue in the Diocese.’

And here are the honest reflections of Bishop Gene Robinson on what has occurred. ”˜Let me also state strongly that the Joint Standing Committee of the ACC and the Primates misunderstood us when they stated that the HOB in fact “declared a moratorium on all such public Rites.” Neither in our discussions nor in our statement did we agree to or declare such a moratorium on permitting such rites to take place. That may be true in many or most dioceses, but that is certainly not the case in my own diocese and many others. The General Convention has stated that such rites are indeed to be considered within the bounds of the pastoral ministry of this Church to its gay and lesbian members, and that remains the policy of The Episcopal Church.’

I believe that this is what Canon Kearon was referring to when he spoke of the need for some episcopalian bishops to consider their position in the Communion. It already dents the modified rapture of the Joint Committee in saying, ”˜The Communion should move towards closure on these matters, at least for the time being,’ It certainly justifies the response of Bishop Mouneer and others. The matter is not resolved.

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The president posthumously awarded the nation’s highest military honor for valor to Lt. Michael Murphy of Patchogue, N.Y.””the first given for combat in Afghanistan.

Before the emotional White House ceremony, Murphy’s parents Dan and Maureen Murphy met with Bush and gave him a gold dog tag in tribute to their son.

“What we were most touched by was that the president immediately put that on underneath his shirt, and when he made the presentation of the Medal of Honor, he wore that against his chest,” said the father.

After the ceremony, Dan Murphy said, Bush told the family: “I was inspired by having Michael next to my chest.”

The father, who fought back tears during the ceremony, said they were “deeply moved” by Bush’s gesture.

“It was very emotional on everybody’s part,” said Maureen Murphy.

Bush presided over a solemn ceremony honoring their son’s battlefield decision to expose himself to deadly enemy fire in order to make a desperate call for help for his elite combat team.

“While their missions were often carried out in secrecy, their love of country and devotion to each other was always clear,” Bush said. “On June 28, 2005, Michael would give his life for these ideals.”

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Catholic order matters. Rowan Williams understands the importance of Catholic order and will not reward actions that threaten such order. Will the Anglican Right now step up and show at least as much commitment to Catholic order?

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