My sister-in-law, a professional storyteller, was in Europe speaking at various libraries. Later, she called her mother and told her that she’d just given a speech for 250 librarians.
“Great,” said her mother. “How much is that in American money?”
–David Rumpeltin in the July 2009 Reader’s Digest, page 175
For a Long Beach Anglican church, all eyes will be on Newport Beach in the coming months.
St. James Anglican Church, which made national headlines in 2004 when it joined with All Saints Church in Belmont Heights in a split from the U.S. Episcopal Church, on Wednesday petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to review a decision by the California Supreme Court.
St. James, which along with All Saints and St. David’s in North Hollywood, has been engaged in a drawn-out property dispute with the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles since 2004. It is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the state court decision that it says improperly gives certain religious organizations the power to take property they do not own.
The Anglican Church in North America currently is made up of 700 dissident Anglican churches, ranging from tiny Southern congregations that meet at Holiday Inns to larger congregations like St. Vincent’s in Bedford.
“The challenge before them is obviously two-fold,” says the Rev. Bill Sachs, an Episcopal priest and author of the forthcoming book, “Homosexuality and the Crisis of Anglicanism.” “How do you meld all of these groups that have prized their particular identity? And the larger challenge is how do you transform a spirit of protest into a positive message that might even attract newcomers?”
Denominational realignment has dogged the Episcopal Church since it broke from the Church of England after the Revolutionary War. But never has such a large chunk of the church broken off in protest. Its intent is to form a polyglot communion with like-minded dioceses spanning from Rwanda to Argentina.
(Church of Uganda) The House of Bishops of the Church of Uganda, in its regularly scheduled meeting on 23rd June 2009, made several resolutions concerning the state of the Anglican Communion and the future of global Anglicanism.
The Bishops reaffirmed their commitment to the Anglican Communion and to the GAFCON movement as a force of renewal within the Communion, and pledged to continue to be a voice of orthodox faith, which is the biblical and historic faith of Anglicanism.
The Bishops were deeply concerned that the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) refused to seat the Church of Uganda’s duly appointed clergy delegate, Rev. Phil Ashey, and deprived the Church of Uganda from the representation to which it is entitled. The Bishops said, “The Church of Uganda’s prerogative to choose who should represent us was abused by the ACC by refusing to seat our delegate. We consider this to be a profound violation of our rights by the Joint Standing Committee and the ACC.”
The House of Bishops also reaffirmed its commitment to not receive funds from the Episcopal Church (TEC) and the Anglican Church of Canada, revisionist TEC and Canadian dioceses and parishes, and funding organs associated with them. The Bishops also chastised and called to account those Bishops among them who have violated this collective and long-standing decision.
Finally, concerning the formation of the Anglican Church in North America, the House of Bishops resolved that it warmly supports the creation of the new Province in North America, the Anglican Church in North America, recognizes Bishop Bob Duncan as its new Archbishop, and declares that it is in full communion with the Anglican Church in North America.
Likewise, the Bishops resolved to release, effective immediately, the Bishops, clergy and churches in America under its ecclesiastical oversight and to transfer them to the Anglican Church in North America. The House of Bishops further resolved to continue its partnership and friendship with them in mission and ministry, extends its hand of fellowship, and wishes them well.
Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi said, “This really is the moment we have been waiting for. We have been longing to be able to repatriate our clergy and congregations to a Biblical and viable ecclesiastical structure in North America, and that day has now come. To God be the glory.”
St. James Anglican Church, which is at the center of a nationally publicized church property dispute with The Episcopal Church, today will file a petition for writ of certiorari with the Supreme Court of the United States. St. James is asking the Court to overturn a prior decision of the California Supreme Court, which conferred a special power on certain religious denominations to take property they do not own simply by passing an internal “rule.” The petition asks the Supreme Court to decide whether, under the U.S. Constitution, certain religious denominations can disregard the normal rules of property ownership that apply to everyone else.
Dr. John Eastman, a nationally recognized constitutional law scholar, has joined the legal team to pursue the appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. A response from the Court regarding the St. James petition can be expected as early as October 2009. A decision could be reached as early as mid-2010.
“We will be arguing to the U.S. Supreme Court that the California Supreme Court’s interpretation of state law has violated the First Amendment of the United States Constitution….”
God, history, and provinces representing the overwhelming majority of the members of the Anglican Communion were on the side of the ACNA, Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan told the 234 delegates drawn from the ACNA’s 28 founding jurisdictions including four former dioceses of the Episcopal Church, representing some 700 congregations and 100,000 Anglicans in the US and Canada.
The break with the Episcopal Church was now complete, Bishop Duncan said. “There is no one here who will go back.”
Delegates attending the June 22-25 convocation formally adopted the ACNA’s Constitution and Canons and were also addressed by Bishop Duncan — who was elected archbishop on June 21 by a meeting of the ACNA’s House of Bishops — and California megachurch pastor Rick Warren, and Metropolitan Jonah, the head of the Orthodox Church in America.
Archbishop Duncan lauded the comprehensiveness and unity of the new province, which bridged the traditional theological divide between High and Low churchmen, Anglo-Catholics and Evangelicals, in addition to the modern question of the ordination of women.
When it comes to blow-out church services, the Anglicans can sure put on the dog. I’ve been filing stories for the past three days on the constitutional convention for the Anglican Church of North America, the emerging 39th province of the 77-million-strong Anglican Communion. The big party to end it all was Wednesday night (it’s 1:14 a.m. as I type this on Thursday) and it was a splasher.
The site was a Texas megachurch called Christ Church in Plano, a north Dallas suburb. Although I got lost getting there from Fort Worth (first ended up in Garland somehow), I knew when I finally drove up that this was the place. Talk about huge. Buildings everywhere and the sanctuary was cathedral-like in its vastness. All that was missing were side chapels and votive candles. The decor is a bit stark – no Christ on the main cross above the altar which goes along with low-church evangelicalism Texas-style.
The spiritual leader of the Orthodox Church in America offered to begin talks aimed at full communion with the new Anglican Church in North America, then named a series of obstacles whose removal could tear apart the hard-won unity among the 100,000 theological conservatives who broke from the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada.
“What will it take for a true ecumenical reconciliation? Because that is what I am seeking by being here today,” Metropolitan Jonah said to a standing ovation from 900 people assembled in a tent on the grounds of St. Vincent Cathedral in Bedford, Texas.
He spoke of St. Tikhon, a 19th-century Russian Orthodox missionary to the United States who initiated a close relationship with the Episcopal Church that later cooled.
The new Anglican Church in North America will give former Episcopalians new confidence and pride in being Anglicans, Jack Iker, bishop of a Fort Worth group that has left the Episcopal Church, declared Wednesday.
“Over the last 30 years, our members have winced or shuddered when they saw a story about the Episcopal Church in the public press,” he said, “because it has usually been about some scandal or outrageous thing one of our leaders has said or done.”
Iker said the new Anglican body “gives mainstream clergy and laity a chance to recover confidence and enthusiasm in being an Anglican Christian.”
California’s controller said on Wednesday that he would have to issue IOUs in a week if lawmakers can’t quickly solve a $24 billion budget deficit, and the state’s treasurer plans to tap a reserve fund to meet debt service costs.
The measures came as a budget crisis deepened in the most populous U.S. state and the gridlocked legislature failed to pass a proposed $11 billion in cuts.
“Next Wednesday we start a fiscal year with a massively unbalanced spending plan and a cash shortfall not seen since the Great Depression,” Controller John Chiang said in a statement announcing that he would be forced to use IOUs to pay the state’s bills beginning on July 2.
Thousands of American troops are being poured into southern Afghanistan to break the “stalemate” in the region, the senior British commander in the country said today.
General Jim Dutton, deputy commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan, denied that the British forces based in Helmand province in the south had been fighting a “losing campaign” against the Taliban.
But he acknowledged that “neither side could progress much” with the present force levels.
The personal impact of the Sanford affair is more gripping than the political. Sanford has done a horrible thing to his wife and family and friends. He seemed to know and feel this more profoundly than other politicians we’ve seen go through this familiar apology exercise before. That doesn’t excuse him. Not that he was asking that anyone excuse him. He seemed to be trying to take all the blame, as he should. Some might think his explanations were excuses. To me they seemed like a man confessing the details of a crime.
The minute Sanford started speaking, the reviews poured in via e-mail and Twitter. He was rambling, confused. He didn’t tear up enough when talking about his wife. He favored his mistress. He answered the questions too thoroughly. All these judgments seemed absurd. A man standing in front of a bank of cameras in the middle of a complete collapse is going to say a lot of things poorly.
The snap judgments failed to acknowledge a grain of the fundamental human carnage we were witnessing. You can laugh at Sanford, as you can laugh at a video of a wrecked Amy Winehouse falling all over her house. But at some point, even though they did it to themselves, you have to feel sorry for them as human beings. You can do that, I think, and not be a fan of adultery or drug use.
South Carolina, kept in the dark about the whereabouts of its governor in recent days, now knows where he’s been on many different levels. Mr. Sanford’s revelations at his Wednesday press conference were stunning in their content and by the sudden public presentation of his personal lapses. It’s a scandal for sure, but not necessarily crippling to the remainder of his term.
The governor admitted an extramarital affair with a woman in Argentina and having taken a five-day trip there without telling his staff of the destination. Long viewed as a devoted family man, the governor acknowledged being estranged from his wife, who is living with their four sons on Sullivan’s Island.
Mr. Sanford, normally resolute and self-contained, was clearly embarrassed and shaken by his public confession of the long-term relationship. Nevertheless, the governor managed to make a full explanation of his lapses and convey his commitment to make amends.
In an attempt to conceal this private matter, Mr. Sanford deliberately and willfully deceived the people of South Carolina. He eluded the state’s top law enforcement agency and lied to staff about his whereabouts. And he abandoned his duties and exposed this state in a way no elected chief executive should. By making himself unreachable and refusing to take the simple step of turning his authority temporarily over to the lieutenant governor while he was out of the country, he left more than 4 million South Carolinians unprotected in the event of an emergency that only he had the constitutional authority to respond to, particularly one that would call for the assistance of the National Guard. That is inexcusable.
The governor has decided to resign as head of the Republican Governor’s Association because of the problems, and we believe that is appropriate. There are those in our state who understandably question whether he will be able to continue as our state’s chief executive, and believe he should resign as governor as well. We are not ready to join them at this point.
This story is still unraveling, and we do not know what else might be turned up. Moreover, Mr. Sanford’s own actions in the coming days and weeks will play a huge role in determining whether he is fit to continue as governor.
The stunning 2-0 victory by the United States over Spain ”” the best team in the world ”” is probably the greatest victory by the men’s national soccer team.
And when you think of it, the victory Wednesday is probably the second-biggest upset by an American team, behind only the 1980 Miracle on Ice by the hockey team over the Soviet Union in the Olympics.
Those Soviets were state-supported professionals, beaten by amateurs from the United States. On the field in South Africa on Wednesday, everybody was a professional, although just about every Spanish player is employed at a higher level than his American counterpart.
Nowhere in Iraq is the silence about the Iranian election controversy more striking than in this city, the burial place of the founder of the Shiite sect of Islam and the faith’s theological center for hundreds of years.
Clerics and religious students here shy away from even admitting that they are watching broadcasts of the popular uprising next door, although Iran and especially its clergy in many respects are kith and kin; they study the same texts, follow similar courses of religious study and revere the same saints.
In the last 30 years, since the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the religious powers in the two countries have taken entirely different roads. Najaf’s clerics publicly rejected the idea promoted by Iran’s former supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, that clerics have the final say over political matters. As Iran’s current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, threatens to use force to subdue protesters calling for an annulment of the election, Najaf’s senior clerics have said nothing.
(ENS) Income during the 2010-2012 triennium could be $9 million less than forecast last January, when a draft churchwide budget was approved, according to the chair of the Episcopal Church’s budgetary committee.
Pan Adams-McCaslin, chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Program, Budget and Finance (PB&F), said in a June 24 interview that diocesan commitments during the next three years could be an estimated $7.7 million less and interest on the church’s endowment funds is projected to be $1.3 million less.
The diocesan figure is an estimate based on an on-going survey of bishops and diocesan financial officers, she said. They have been asked how realistic it is to assume that they could fulfill the Executive Council’s predicted one percent increase in diocesan income in 2010 and two percent increases in both 2011 and 2012.
A committee of the Episcopal Diocese of South Dakota will meet here Friday during the diocese’s Niobrara Convocation to review the proposed transfer of titles of several Pine Ridge church properties and take public comments on the issue from interested persons.
After successful negotiations, St. John’s Anglican Church, in Petaluma, California, entered into a peaceful settlement with mutual releases with the Episcopal Diocese of Northern California, The Episcopal Church and St. John’s Episcopal Church, Petaluma on May 14, 2009. St. John’s general counsel Lu T. Nguyen made the following comments about how the parish reached the decision to settle at this time: “While St. John’s is fully supportive of the position of St. James’ Anglican Church in Newport Beach, California and their appeal to the United States Supreme Court regarding certain aspects of the California Supreme Court decision in Episcopal Church Cases; and while recognizing their right to further defend themselves; the leadership of St. John’s reached the conviction that continued litigation over the property was not in the best interest of the financial and spiritual health of the congregation. Guided in part by the biblical admonition of 1 Corinthians 6:1-11, they believed the Lord was calling them to settle and focus their ministry calling to their local community.”
In reflecting on all that has transpired since leaving the Episcopal Church the Rev. David Miller,
rector of the parish, wrote the following:
“This press release finds the St. John’s church family preparing to enter a whole new stage of our
life together. We stand ready to leave the familiar and historic surroundings of the building at 5th
and C, a building that has been the church home to my family since our arrival in Petaluma in
1998; and a building that has been home to many of our members for much, much longer. Many
memories and emotions arise as we say goodbye.”
Fr. Miller continues, “However, as difficult as leaving is, two summary statements stand out as
defining of the spirit in which we move to our new quarters.
ï¶ First is the recognition that this is not about the property but about the Gospel and the
Word of God that we have been charged to uphold and defend. We did not leave the
Episcopal Church to keep the property; we left to keep the Faith.
ï¶ Second is the affirmation that the church is not the building; the church is the people.
We are blessed to have a spirit of unity as we move forward.”
St. John’s Anglican takes the occasion of this press release to say a heart felt thank you to the
many people of Petaluma who have prayed for and encouraged us in so many amazing ways
throughout this process.
St. John’s Anglican Church is pleased to announce that beginning Sunday, July 5, 2009, we will
be holding Sunday services at 8:30am and 10:30am at the Petaluma Community Center at
Lucchesi Park. We welcome any from the community who do not now have a church home or
would like to support us on this occasion, to come and worship with us.
New worship location:
St. John’s Anglican Church
Meeting at: Petaluma Community Center (Lucchesi Park)
320 N. McDowell Blvd.
Petaluma, CA 94954
(707) 283-1111
Service times: 8:30 a.m. (traditional) and 10:30 a.m. (contemporary)
Administrative office and mailing address: 55 Maria Dr., Ste. 837, Petaluma, CA 94954
As I stated in my Bishop’s Address at our Diocesan Convention in March, I see little reward or benefit in expending our resources and energies in unfruitful expeditions trying to stem the tide of revisionism in The Episcopal Church. Certainly I ask those who are intercessors to pray that God would “stay the hand of the revisionists” at General Convention. And we who attend will, under God, carry out our roles in faithful witness to the truth as we have received it in Holy Scripture and in the traditions of the Church. But the creative thrust of the diocese””beyond the gospel imperative to preach the gospel, make disciples, and plant churches as missionary outposts of the Kingdom of God””needs to be elsewhere than in political machinations of the General Convention. As I’ve stated before, God has called us to help shape the future of Anglicanism through mutually enriching missional relationships and through inter-diocesan, inter-provincial accountability. Certainly, Kendall as our Canon Theologian will monitor the developments at General Convention 2009, but I believe it is in keeping with our declared vision as a diocese to focus on what we believe God is calling us to do, not on the strategies and battles he called us to engage in yesterday.
Before I conclude, let me address an issue that I find is sometimes confusing to many within the diocese, as well as those who are watching us in the reappraiser wing of North American Anglicanism, specifically in what is called “The Inside Strategy.” Among the writers and bloggers of North American Anglicanism there has emerged what some call the inside and the outside strategy in battling with heterodox teaching and practice in the Church. Some who were once Episcopalians have left because they were convinced that anything resembling orthodox belief and practice was lost. Many of these are now gathering at the ACNA convention. They are sometimes referred to as engaging in the outside strategy. That is, in the cause of orthodoxy in North American Anglicanism they have left previously official churches, such as the Anglican Church of Canada and The Episcopal Church in the United States. According to this understanding it is believed the best way to revive or reform Anglicanism in North America is to work outside the established churches of the Anglican Communion. In distinction from those outside there are those who remain within TEC and the Anglican Church in Canada. Since they are staying, but still hold to the same understanding of the faith as those who have left, it is assumed by some that they must be carrying out an inside strategy of reformation. We in South Carolina are then said to be carrying out such an agenda””battling for orthodoxy, seeking to win back the day in The Episcopal Church in some maneuvering of ecclesiastical politics. While some within the Church may indeed be doing this, it is certainly not my intent. The stakes at present are much higher than what is happening in Episcopalianism or the continuing Anglican bodies in North America.
If we could be said to be carrying out an “Inside Strategy” it is not towards TEC: it is toward the Anglican Communion. Put simply, we remain inside the structures of the Communion to help shape the emerging Anglicanism of the 21st Century so long as we are able. It is ironic that as one of the few dioceses of The Episcopal Church with documented growth in every significant metric of measurement””membership, average Sunday attendance (ASA), spiritual vitality, finances, missional relationships through the last decade””we can influence the developments within global Anglicanism more effectively than we can influence our own Church! When conferences are held for bishops and leaders in TEC about growth and reaching new generations, why are experts brought in from non-Anglican sources and the prior architect of growth in the one diocese in TEC that has documented growth, Bishop Salmon, is not invited to speak? Why are the rectors in this diocese who have so clearly effectively reached their communities with the gospel never once referenced or consulted? Even the Presiding Bishop had to revise her statement that no diocese in TEC had seen growth, when documentation was cited that South Carolina had seen significant decadal growth. But, irony aside, getting back to my main point, our “Inside Strategy” is not to tilt at windmills in Quixotic fashion thinking we can turn back the clock to some prior age; it is to help shape the future that is emerging in global Anglicanism from within the Communion.
The Prime Minister is looking at blueprints for a new and radically reformed upper chamber of parliament as part of his programme of constitutional reform.
Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, will publish a paper on plans for Lords reform before the Commons rises for its summer break next month.