Kendall Harmon, canon theologian for the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina, said it’s “part of our duty as Christians” to forgive Sanford. But it will be a particularly difficult process for those who saw him as a presidential hopeful, he said.

“I feel like there was a lot of hope in him, so I think the disillusionment is that much greater,” he said.

But people should reserve judgment, because there “but for the grace of God go all the rest of us,” Harmon said.

“The story of David and Bathsheba is in the Bible for a reason,” he said, a reference to the story of an adulterous relationship between the king of Israel and the wife of a soldier. “People’s naivety about their vulnerability to these kinds of problems boggles my mind.”

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Walking around the lobby I saw several old friends. The Rev’d Mark Goodman, former rector of Trinity Myrtle Beach, is here with his family. The Rev’d Kevin Martin and his wife, Sharon, are here. Kevin was one the key staff members at Episcopal Renewal Ministries (”ERM”) back when Chuck Irish was the director (mid 80’s ”“ mid 90’s). A little while later I ran into The Rev’d Tony Clark. Tony, the current Dean of the Cathedral in Orlando, was a year behind me at seminary. I’ll be curious to see how many old friends I’ll see since most of them have left the Episcopal Church over the past few years.

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We will have a lot of coverage on this, so the schedule will be something to keep bookmarked.

Last week more than 800 men and women gathered in Bedford, Texas, to elect an archbishop and ratify a constitution for the ACNA, a new alliance for churches that have left the Episcopal Church. Led by Robert Duncan, bishop of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, the ACNA comprises more than 700 theologically conservative churches with about 70,000 parishioners.

There were many central theological beliefs that last week’s attendees could agree on in their constitution and canon laws, including the full inspiration of the Bible, the centrality of baptism and Communion to church life, and the authority of the historic church creeds. But for the time being, ACNA leaders have not reached full agreement on female priests. At this time, each jurisdiction is free to decide whether or not to ordain women, but jurisdictions cannot force others to either accept women’s ordination or to stop practicing it. Women bishops are forbidden.

“For those who believe the ordination of women to be a grave error, and for those who believe it scripturally justifiable . . . we should be in mission together until God sorts us out,” said Duncan in last week’s opening address. “It is not perfect, but it is enough.”

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The 750 churches in the newly formed Anglican Church in North America were once among the most charismatic churches in the Episcopal fold, said the Rev. Briane Turley, rector of Tulsa’s Church of the Holy Spirit Anglican.

Turley’s church is one of two Tulsa-area congregations in the new denomination.

Most of the congregations left the Episcopal Church over concerns that it was drifting from its biblical foundation.

“Most of the largest Episcopal churches have joined us,” he said.

Turley said that the largest Episcopal churches have tended to be evangelical and charismatic at their core.

“We’ve tended to attract the most evangelical, and the most Anglo-Catholic congregations,” he said, churches that adhere to the biblical record and also to traditional, liturgical forms of worship.

“It has to do with a thirst for the transcendent Christ, for knowing him, having entered into a deeper relationship with him,” he said.

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Last week, the Anglican congregation at St. Paul’s handed over the keys to its $2.3 million facility to Episcopal Bishop Jerry Lamb. The congregation became one of the first in the nation to voluntarily give its property to the Episcopal Church before a lawsuit was filed.

It’s a miniature portrait of a conflict going on across the country over the interpretation of Scripture, such as whether Jesus is the only way to salvation, as Anglicans believe, and if same-sex marriages should be allowed, as Episcopalians favor.

But Sunday, both sides seemed content.

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America’s long-awaited fiscal train wreck is now underway. Depending on policy actions taken now and over the next few years, federal deficits will likely average as much as 6% of GDP through 2019, contributing to a jump in debt held by the public to as high as 82% of GDP by then – a doubling over the next decade. Worse, barring aggressive policy actions, deficits and debt will rise even more sharply thereafter as entitlement spending accelerates relative to GDP. Keeping entitlement promises would require unsustainable borrowing, taxes or both, severely testing the credibility of our policies and hurting our long-term ability to finance investment and sustain growth. And soaring debt will force up real interest rates, reducing capital and productivity and boosting debt service. Not only will those factors steadily lower our standard of living, but they will imperil economic and financial stability.

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“America is six months behind; it has wasted a lot of time,” said Patrick Devedjian, the minister in charge of the French relance, or stimulus. By the time Washington gets around to doling out most of its money, Mr. Devedjian sniffed, “the crisis could be over.”

Gallic pride aside, Mr. Devedjian has a point. While he plans to spend 75 percent of France’s stimulus money this year, the White House is giving itself until fall 2010 to lay out that big a share of the American expenditure. And many experts predict that Washington will fall short of that goal.

As it turns out, France’s more centralized, state-directed economy ”” so often criticized in good times for smothering entrepreneurship and holding back growth ”” is proving remarkably effective at deploying funds quickly and efficiently in bad times.

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It is good news that those Anglican parishes that are strongly opposed to homosexuality are forming a new movement. The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FCA) was launched last year as a pressure group within the international Anglican communion, but only now is it trying to exert grassroots influence, raising awareness for its cause on the parish level. If it is successful, then it will be easy to identify the sexual politics of your local parish church. It will be impossible to deny that there is a church within the church, that division has become schism.

This is good news because honesty is better than dishonesty. The fact is that conservative evangelicals profess a different version of Christianity from other Anglicans. There are admittedly other divisions within Anglicanism, but this is the really big one. If opposition to homosexuality is a basic component of your idea of Christian truth, then you ought to be clear about this, and not cohabit with those who fudge the issue, or openly express disdain for your position.

Over the past 20 years or so we have seen huge amounts of dishonesty and evasion on this. The church’s leadership has been trying to build a home on the fence. The liberals and the conservatives must both be accommodated, it has said: as long as both sides are still part of the same communion, then there is hope of reconciliation. A pious sentiment, surely? Well, the piety is laced with self-serving evasion and hypocrisy.

The fault lies with the liberals….

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A traditionalist Anglican group has insisted at its launch conference that it is not poised to break away from the Church of England.

The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans of UK and Ireland will campaign against active homosexuality in the Church.

Its leaders told the conference in London that liberal moves had brought “heartache” and “real problems”.

Bishop of Lewes the Rt Rev Wallace Benn said he wanted “to pull people back” rather than breaking away.

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Speaking at the group’s launch event in London, attended by an estimated 1,600 people from 300 parishes across the UK and Ireland, Bishop Benn said: “Parts of the Church of England don’t believe it, they are moving away from the historic Biblical Christianity.

“It’s very important to understand that when novelty is introduced into the church, as the New Testament says, there are divisions.

“We’re trying to move back to the core of our Christian faith. Sadly some in the British isles are moving away and where bishops do that, there is particular unhappiness in some dioceses and it causes real problems and real heartaches for people and for churches.

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Consideration of the first two issues will take place against the backdrop of recent news that the House of Bishops has commissioned its second theological study in nine years on homosexuality.

In addition, House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson wrote to the deputies June 29 that it would be asked to consider convening in two rare “committee of the whole” sessions the afternoon of July 8 and the morning of July 9 “to exchange information and viewpoints among the deputies” and to inform the legislative committee that will consider all B033 resolutions.

Concern over the reaction from the wider Anglican Communion about eventual decisions made about Resolution B033 and same-gender blessings likely also will hover over the Anaheim meeting.

The Episcopal Church began studying issues of human sexuality in 1964, when General Convention said that “changing patterns in human action have raised inquiries concerning the church’s position on sexual behavior” and called for data gathering and studies that would result in recommendations to the next convention. Since then, the church has published 10 officially sanctioned studies and reports on human sexuality, including the 2005 “To Set Our Hope in Christ,” which summarizes the history of the debate and the changes in perspective the church has experienced.

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Conservative Anglicans, who oppose the Church of England’s stand on issues such as gay clergy, on Monday ruled out formally breaking away from the mainstream as a group has done in the United States.

Members of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FCA), also unhappy at plans to allow the ordination of woman bishops, said they wanted to create an umbrella movement to promote conservative views within the Church.

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Blessings of same-sex marriage and removal of an informal ban on gay bishops are expected to be the top items at the upcoming 10-day meeting of the Episcopal General Convention, which starts Wednesday in Anaheim, Calif.

Since the 2006 General Convention in Columbus, Ohio, the number of states that have legalized same-sex marriage has increased to six.

Bishops from those six states – Vermont, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, Iowa and Connecticut – have put forth a resolution asking a “generous and flexible response” to same-sex couples seeking to be wed in these states, according to Religion News Service.

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Could it be a sign from God?

An Episcopal church in Cobb County wants to install an electronic sign to replace an old-style sign that a car destroyed two years ago. It has had to keep the high-tech shift on hold, though, because county rules prohibit electronic signs in residential areas.

Now, a ray of light may shine down on the church after all. Cobb County commissioners are considering a change to the county code that would allow electronic signs for some churches, private schools and others in residential areas.

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Check it out here and you can find more links with pictures there.

Q. Could you give us a brief definition of “the gospel”?

A. I could try taking a Pauline angle. When Paul talks about “the gospel,” he means “the good news that the crucified and risen Jesus is the Messiah of Israel and therefore the Lord of the world.” Now, that’s about as brief as you can do it.

The reason that’s good news”¦ In the Roman Empire, when a new emperor came to the throne, there’d obviously been a time of uncertainty. Somebody’s just died. Is there going to be chaos? Is society going to collapse? Are we going to have pirates ruling the seas? Are we going to have no food to eat? And the good news is, we have an emperor and his name is such and such. So, we’re going to have justice and peace and prosperity, and isn’t that great?!

Now, of course, most people in the Roman Empire knew that was rubbish because it was just another old jumped-up aristocrat who was going to do the same as the other ones had done. But that was the rhetoric.

Paul slices straight in with the Isaianic message: Good news! God is becoming King and he is doing it through Jesus! And therefore, phew! God’s justice, God’s peace, God’s world is going to be renewed.

And in the middle of that, of course, it’s good news for you and me. But that’s the derivative from, or the corollary of the good news which is a message about Jesus that has a second-order effect on me and you and us. But the gospel is not itself about you are this sort of a person and this can happen to you. That’s the result of the gospel rather than the gospel itself.

It’s very clear in Romans. Romans 1:3-4: This is the gospel. It’s the message about Jesus Christ descended from David, designated Son of God in power, and then Romans 1:16-17 which says very clearly: “I am not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God unto salvation.” That is, salvation is the result of the gospel, not the center of the gospel itself.

—Please guess who is speaking before you look and find the answer.

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…I felt I needed to at least say something about the Church, Anglicanism, and that failing institution, TEC. Frankly, at this point TEC is ecclesiologically analogous to a failed state in political terms. The Presiding Bishop has taken on authority never granted to her under the Constitution or Canons, the General Convention is at a point where folks within the church obey or disobey its edicts at a whim (whether on the left or the right), TEC can no longer interact normally with other churches in Christendom or in Anglicanism, and it is failing economically.

—Brad Drell of Western Louisiana who will not be present at the 2009 Episcopal Church’s General Convention

Caught this in this weekend’s Financial Times:

Questions of Truth: Fifty-one Responses to Questions about God, Science, and Belief
By John Polkinghorne and Nicholas Beale
Westminster/John Knox Press £11.99, 160 pages
For several years physicist and Anglican priest Polkinghorne and his former pupil Beale have answered questions on their website about the relationship between religion and science. This is a probing selection.

Jim Packer is one of the giants of the real world-Anglicanism. Amongst the wise of this world he is disdained, but his praises are sung in all the churches. Astonishingly, in the eyes of his institutional church he is no longer one of us. He has chosen to separate himself from what he has called the sanctification of sin.

Is he still an Anglican?

When we can seriously ask that question, something is deeply wrong. We are at a watershed, at a parting of the ways. Decisions have to be made.

In this country, the Christian foundations have been shaken. In this and the next generation there will be fought what may amount to the last battle for the soul of the nation. It will be an ideological war, a war of ideas. But great issues will hang upon the outcome: the fate of a culture and the eternal fate of souls. Many look to you for guidance and resource and inspiration. Can we do so any longer?

How can we test your resolve to evangelize your people? Unless you develop a deep confidence in the gospel of the saving work of God through Jesus Christ, a willingness to work together for Christ, and a determination to submit to the teaching of scripture, it will not be done. The culture will swallow you alive.

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Newly-installed Kenyan Archbishop Eliud Wabukala has called for unity among the 77 million-member global Anglican Communion, which is threatened by a split centred, as far as many African bishops are concerned, on the issue of homosexuality.

“We are in a state of brokenness because the truth of the Scripture has not been upheld in some provinces,” said Archbishop Wabukala in July 5 homily after his enthronement as the fifth archbishop of the Anglican Church of Kenya. “We call on all Anglicans to come together again around the Gospel.”

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This is the season for historical purification. All over the world, religions and nations seem ready to peek into the dark places of their histories, to learn from the atrocities of the past and thus to experience a kind of collective catharsis. It is an imperfect process, but the press for it is undeniable. In Australia the prime minister formally apologized for the past treatment of the aboriginal population. In America there is similar talk about slavery and torture. Turkey struggles with the stain of Armenian genocide a century ago. Islam battles with the association of jihad with mass murder. But the nexus between purification and apology makes the process delicate.

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The reality is that the Common Cause Theological Statement has outlived its usefulness. What is needed is a new doctrinal statement, one which is not only more comprehensive in its recognition of divergent opinions among orthodox Anglicans but also displays greater solidarity with the Anglican entities that have supported the establishment of a new orthodox province in North America and extend their recognition to the ACNA as that province in formation. Such a statement need not be complicated””just a few well-chosen words””around which all orthodox Anglicans can in good conscience come together in the cause of the gospel.

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The low-cost airline would charge passengers less on “bar stools” with seat belts around their waists.

Michael O’Leary, the chief executive, has already held talks with US plane manufacturer Boeing about designing an aircraft with standing room.

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However, today the Bishop said: “The Be Faithful Press Release says that I would be calling on churches and Christians to repent of capitulating to cultures around them and to refocus on the faith of the Church from down the ages and an authentic mission to the nations. This is what I said to the reporter from the Telegraph. I said that we all needed to repent for straying from God’s purpose for us.

“On being pressed as to whether this included homosexuals, I said something to the effect that yes, we all need to repent when we fall short of God’s will and be transformed. I went on to say a little about how Christians should understand marriage and family and the proper expression of our sexual nature.

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To some extent, the proof will be in the pudding. The first thing to do is to learn from the mistakes made by conservatives in the United States.

Over recent decades there was a growth of evangelical and Catholic groupings formed to wage cultural warfare within the American Church. The alarming trajectory of The Episcopal Church towards heterodoxy was not always obvious to insiders and protests against divisive, controversial leaders like the über-liberal Bishop Spong were disorganised and fragmented.

Personality differences and impatience led to fragmentation. Many churches and leaders left The Episcopal Church altogether leaving the conservatives and orthodox weakened. It came to a point at which valiant attempts to regroup at the 1998 Lambeth Conference, and the 2000 Denver General Convention, though largely successful, were already doomed to failure.

The resulting formation of a new province in North America became almost inevitable in the light of the fact that conservatives were so divided and fragmented in the early days that their rearguard actions were ultimately ineffective. Although my own sympathy is with those who don’t give up and continue trying to reform The Episcopal Church, I recognise that will not always be possible.

So why should anyone support FCA and why should it be launched now? Firstly, it’s a way of supporting Anglicans in North America who are struggling to remain Anglican in very difficult circumstances.

Secondly, it’s a direct link to the Global South provinces….

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The sad impression of the last year is that those most committed to GAFCON and FCA are determined to press ahead with their vision and, convinced by their own rhetoric and rightness, to ignore or dismiss those who are unwilling to follow their lead. NEAC5 demonstrated widespread unease about aspects of GAFCON and FCA but no serious attempt has been made to address these by those who have now proceeded to launch FCA in the UK. The majority of evangelical bishops remain at best cautious or sceptical about this development but there appears to have been no attempt to consult with them or take on board their concerns.

At NEAC5 it was clear that there were those already convinced about GAFCON and FCA ”“ many of them having been in Jerusalem or close to those who were ”“ but that the majority was not as yet persuaded. The presentations on the day from GAFCON supporters preached to and roused the converted but left many others at best unconvinced and at worst further alienated and concerned. Rather than learning from their failure to win a majority on that day, FCA appears to have continued with the same conviction that passionate selling of its diagnosis and itself as the remedy will be sufficient to win people over. It does not appear to recognise that this rallying of the core troops in fact often has the opposite effect on those looking in from outside or the margins. It appears unable or unwilling to understand why some of us who have so much in common with its commitments feel unable to throw ourselves whole-heartedly into its plans yet long to find a way of engaging constructively with them rather than simply opposing them.

It may be that FCA’s calling is to launch now as a small tight-knit fellowship of the whole-heartedly committed who feel most alienated by developments in the Church of England and Anglican Communion over recent years (including women’s leadership) and who want to form a body of the like-minded on how to pursue their concerns politically. In that case it is clearly not the place for me and the only question is whether it can relate to people like me in a constructive rather than destructive manner.

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