The Anglican Church in North America Provincial Council has endorsed the Anglican Covenant and expressed solidarity with the Communion Partners.

The Covenant is a four-part document that outlines the basics of the Christian faith as Anglicans have historically understood and practiced it. It also provides for accountability among Communion members. The Covenant was initiated by the 2005 Windsor Report which in turn was prompted by the crisis in the Anglican Communion created by the deviation from Biblical teaching and morality in North America.

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You can listen here, it began on my computer at 17:03 and continues until just before 21:00 (so just under 4 minutes total). There are a number of questions about the Archbishop of Canterbury which will be of interest to blog readers. Note that Archbishop Rowan Williams has sent Bishop Santosh Marray (retired bishop of the Seychelles) as his pastoral visitor to the ACNA assembly according to the interview.

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Yet in the current demonstrations we are witnessing not just the end of the first stage of the Iranian democratic experiment, but the collapse of the structural underpinnings of the entire Islamic approach to modern political self-rule. Islam’s categorical imperative for both traditional and fundamentalist Muslims ””“commanding right and forbidding wrong” ”” is being transformed.

This imperative appears repeatedly in the Koran. Historically, it has been understood as a check on the corrupting, restive and libidinous side of the human soul. For modern Islamic militants, it is a war cry as well ”” a justification of the morals police in Saudi Arabia and Iran, of the young men who harass “improperly” attired Muslim women from Cairo to Copenhagen. It is the primary theological reason that Ayatollah Khamenei will try to stop a democratic triumph in his country, since real democracy would allow men, not God and his faithful guardians, the mullahs, to determine right and wrong.

Westerners would do well to understand the magnitude of what is transpiring in the Islamic Republic. Iran’s revolution shook the Islamic world. It was the first attempt by militant Muslims to prove that “Islam has all the answers” ”” or at least enough of them to run a modern state and make its citizenry more moral children of God. But the experiment has failed. The so-called June 12th revolution is the Iranian answer to the recurring hope in Islamic history that the world can be reborn closer to the Prophet Muhammad’s virtuous community. Millions of Iranians said in the presidential election, and more powerfully on the streets since, that they want out of Ayatollah Khomeini’s dream, which has become a nightmare.

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In Hawaii, state employees are bracing for furloughs of three days a month over the next two years, the equivalent of a 14 percent pay cut. In Idaho, lawmakers reduced aid to public schools for the first time in recent memory, forcing pay cuts for teachers.

And in California, where a $24 billion deficit for the coming fiscal year is the nation’s worst, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed releasing thousands of prisoners early and closing more than 200 state parks.

Meanwhile, Maine is adding taxes on candy and ski tickets, Wisconsin on oil companies, and Kentucky on alcohol and cellphone ring tones.

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This elf has been slacking lately and it is only today that it dawned on me that we need a new ACNA category on the blog. So from today onwards, you will now find all stories related to the ACNA here: Anglican Church in North America (ACNA)

News stories, primary source documents and commentary specifically about this week’s ACNA Assembly will be found here: ACNA Inaugural Assembly June 2009. [i](we have re-categorized relevant blog entries from the past week or so)[/i]

All past blog entries about the ACNA from the past 6-7 months are under this category: –Proposed Formation of a new North American Province

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is threatening to crush any further opposition protests over the disputed presidential election and warns demonstrators to prepare for a “revolutionary confrontation” if they take to the streets again.

The country’s most powerful military force ordered demonstrators to “end the sabotage and rioting activities” and said their resistance is a “conspiracy” against Iran.

A statement posted Monday on the Guard’s Web site warned protesters to “be prepared for a resolution and revolutionary confrontation with the Guards, Basij and other security forces and disciplinary forces.”

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The Rev. Craige Borrett, my coworker in the parish where I serve, is going to watch and take notes and report to the diocese. I am posting this because I have already gotten many questions about it.

The link and the schedule is here.

As a result of developments in the Diocese of Springfield, Bishop The Rt. Rev. Peter Beckwith, Bishop of Springfield, will not be attending the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA) Assembly which is scheduled to begin tomorrow at St. Vincent’s Cathedral in Bedford, Texas.

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The Rev. Bill Thompson, Rector of All Saints Anglican Church, Long Beach, California, is the first Bishop of the Diocese of Western Anglicans of the Anglican Church in North America.

“My first reaction upon my election,” the Bishop”elect said, “was to feel very humbled that the College of Bishops felt that I was the person to do this job. Being the Bishop of Western Anglicans is a job that neither I nor anyone else can do on their own. I will need the prayers, support, and hard work, of many to make our diocese what God wants it to be.”

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This clip includes brief comments from Bishop Iker and Bishop Duncan among others.

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Episcopal Bishop Jerry Lamb announced that the first service at St. Paul’s in Modesto will be held July 5 at 10 a.m., instead of the two services originally scheduled.

He said a diocesan committee decided it would be better to have everyone gathered at one time to celebrate the renewal of Episcopal services at the church on Oakdale Road just south of Briggsmore….

Also last week, the nine other self-incorporated parishes with ties to the Anglican diocese headquartered in Fresno received letters from Lamb “to arrange the transition of all properties and assets back to the Episcopal Church.” Two of those parishes are St. Francis in Turlock and St. James (the historic Red Church) in Sonora….

The Rev. Gerry Grossman, pastor of St. Francis, said Lamb’s letter “amounts to the harassment of a local congregation by a national organization. We’ve received ‘invitations’ from him before, but this is the first request to, quote, “give back” something that’s ours. We’re not going to have this taken from us. The story of David and Goliath comes to mind.”

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Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh, who led the network of hundreds of congregations that broke from The Episcopal Church for the past five years under the banner of the Anglican Communion Network, will be installed as the new church body’s first archbishop on June 24 at Christ Church in Plano, Texas. Visiting bishops from as far away as South America, Africa and Asia, representing millions of Anglicans, are expected to attend the June 22-25 assembly.

“We look forward to celebrating the miracle that is the formation of a biblical, missionary and united Anglican Church in North America,” Duncan said in the days leading up to the assembly. “This meeting is historic because it heals decades of division and represents the answer to many years of prayer. It will be a momentous time for orthodox Anglicans everywhere.”

Leaders in the Anglican Communion Network ”“ which will cease operation when the new province launches ”“ had been calling on The Episcopal Church to repent and to get back in line with traditional Anglicanism and Scripture since it consecrated an openly gay bishop in 2003. But over the past couple of years, Duncan and other conservative bishops saw little hope that the U.S. church body would change direction from what breakaway Anglicans claim to be a departure from Christian orthodoxy.

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[Ian] Douglas is not convinced that this week’s assembly is all that important.

“I’ve seen it before,” he said, referring to earlier gatherings of those disenchanted with the Episcopal Church.

But another Episcopal priest, the Rev. William Sachs ”“ a historian and author of the forthcoming book Homosexuality and the Crisis of Anglicanism ”“ called the Bedford meeting “a very big deal.”

He said the new group will be taken much more seriously if it emerges seeming united and willing to work through established procedures for recognition by the Anglican Communion.

Sachs added: “The challenge before them is to come out of there with a message that is positive and distinctive and not simply a shared spirit of protest.”

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A congregation in York expects to be part of a proposed Anglican province in the U.S. whose leaders meet this week in Bedford, Texas.

In its 10th year, St. Alban Anglican Church meets in the basement chapel of Trinity United Church of Christ downtown and averages six to nine worshippers at Mass.

Parishioners said Sunday they’re excited about being part of a larger church body.

“If you want to have something going for the future generations, you need to be part of something bigger,” said the Rt. Rev. Barry E. Yingling, parish rector. “So you’re taken seriously.”

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St. John’s Anglican Church in Vancouver will join a new group of conservative parishes, the latest move in an ideological battle over same-sex marriage with the local Anglican authority.

St. John’s Rev. Canon David Short will be in Texas this week for meetings to create the Anglican Church of North America. It will include roughly 700 parishes, which are united in their belief in orthodox principles. All 30 parishes that make up the conservative Anglican Network in Canada will join.

The new group will be a permanent home for St. John’s, the largest Canadian Anglican parish, with four services and roughly 1,000 worshippers most Sundays.

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The head of the Anglican Communion, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, is sending a “pastoral visitor” from his staff, says Duncan, which he says shows that “we are part of the family.”

Williams himself will attend the Episcopal Church’s governing meeting this summer to give a seminar on combating global poverty.

Jurisdictions that have joined together to form the 28 dioceses and dioceses-in-formation of the Anglican Church in North America are: the dioceses of Fort Worth, Pittsburgh, Quincy and San Joaquin; the Anglican Mission in the Americas (including the Anglican Coalition in Canada); the Convocation of Anglicans in North America; the Anglican Network in Canada; the Reformed Episcopal Church; and the missionary initiatives of Kenya, Uganda, and South America’s Southern Cone. The American Anglican Council and Forward in Faith North America also are founding organizations.

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Representatives from breakaway Episcopal congregations and dioceses ”” bound together in opposition to gay priests and same-sex marriage as well as in their desire to preach the Gospel ”” will gather here this week to create a new Anglican province.

Some say the provincial assembly gathered at St. Vincent’s Episcopal Cathedral Church in Bedford may create something geographically unprecedented in the United States: a second Anglican province.

One province would be the new and theologically conservative Anglican Church in North America; the other, the established and theologically liberal U.S. Episcopal Church.

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In his office at the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh (Anglican), Bishop Robert Duncan has mounted a Scottish broadsword, like that of the hero in his favorite movie, “Braveheart.” It was a gift from a priest after the Episcopal Church accepted a partnered gay bishop.

The legend of “Braveheart” “is about somebody who rallies people to stand up against what is very wrong,” Bishop Duncan said. “It’s a two-edged sword, and the holy scriptures describe scripture as sharper than any two-edged sword.”

Tomorrow in Texas, he is slated to become archbishop of the new Anglican Church in North America. Its 100,000 members broke with the Episcopal Church and Anglican Church of Canada, believing they failed to uphold biblical authority and classic doctrine about Jesus when they approved the consecration of a partnered gay bishop and failed to discipline another bishop who denied Jesus was God incarnate.

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The status of the new Anglican Church in North America, of which Archbishop-elect Duncan will lead, remains uncertain within the global Anglican Communion.

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Martyn Minns recalls the moment he knew he had to leave the Episcopal Church, the U.S. branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion. It was 2005. He was rector of Truro Church in Fairfax, Va., and he was talking with a young family who told him they could no longer attend a church that accepted gay bishops or diverged from what they called Orthodox Christianity.

“As I looked at them, I realized that I had a decision to make,” he says. “Either I moved with them into a rather uncertain future, or I lost the heart of the congregation. So for me it was a matter of, ‘Do I want the church of the future, or the church of the past?’ ”

Soon after that, Minns’ church bolted from the American Episcopal Church and aligned itself with the conservative archbishop of the Anglican province of Nigeria. Now he and other church leaders representing more than 700 congregations, four dioceses and up to 100,000 churchgoers are meeting in Bedford, Texas. They hope to form a new Anglican province in the U.S. ”” one that would rival the Episcopal Church.

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[Mark] Sanford thinks much could be accomplished on economic development when lawmakers return in January for Sanford’s final General Assembly session.

Lawmakers agreed the stimulus debate did little to further damage the relationship, but noted years of conflicts often fueled by gubernatorial press conferences had left little rapport between Republican Sanford and the Republican-controlled Legislature.

But lawmakers said that if anything can bring the two sides together, it is the state’s growing jobless rate ”” now 12.1 percent.

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Can you explain your idea about “protected anonymity””” that it would have been extremely dangerous for some of the witnesses to have been named?

Yes: one very interesting example is the woman who anointed Jesus. She is anonymous in Mark and Matthew, but she is named in John as Mary, the sister of Martha. It is very odd, be­cause Mark does not name her, but he says: “This story will be told about her in all the world when the gospel is preached.”

It is very strange to say that about someone whose name does not appear. But then, if you think about it, she was anointing Jesus as the Messiah, which would have been a very dangerous thing to have been known for at that time. So Mark does not name her. When John is writing a few decades later, however, the whole situation has changed; so he can name her.

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What was surprising was not the informality of your note ”” everyone knows that for public relations folks, journalists are on an automatic first-name basis ”” but that it came from Marie Claire magazine. Fashion writing has not loomed large in this column.

“Today’s hard economic times,” you helpfully explained, “have a profound effect not only on our bank accounts but on our sense of hope and psychological well-being,” an insight, you must admit, that has not escaped millions of Americans, to count only those who still have bank accounts.

Still, you announced that it had inspired an article in the current issue of Marie Claire featuring accounts by “five modern career gals” of “how their belief in faith helped them through the hardest of struggles.”

The article is titled “Cheaper Than Therapy.”

Simply devastating. Read it all.

Dr. Alta Charo, an ethicist at the University of Wisconsin, said that much of the Bush council’s work “seemed more like a public debating society” and that a new commission should focus on helping the government form ethically defensible policy.

A commission of this kind, Dr. Charo said, “lets the president react judiciously to rapid and often startling changes in the scientific landscape.”

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