Gay and lesbian couples in Niagara will soon be able to have their marriages blessed by Anglican priests, under a new rite introduced by Bishop Michael Bird, head of the Niagara diocese.

“The short answer is we believe God is calling us to move in this direction. There’s a strong sense of that across the diocese.” Bird said in an interview about the Niagara Rite of Blessing.

The Niagara diocese will be the second in Canada where a bishop has allowed parish priests to perform ceremonies blessing the marriages of same-sex couples who are already in a civil union. The New Westminster diocese in British Columbia was the first.

Read it all.

Q: What is the ACNA’s plan to reach out to America?

A: We want to be clear that the congregation is God’s fundamental way of doing things, just like the family is God’s fundamental building block for society. And if the chief agency is the congregation, the chief agents are the individual Christians. We have to disciple. We have to teach people to love God ”¦ and share their faith. We have to teach them how to engage the world in service, in Christ’s love.

Q What is your message for Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams?

A: He should understand there really is realignment in Anglicanism. There is a new Reformation in the Christian West. I hope he sees the unity despite our diversity. It’s a unity in Christ. He should see the passion for mission. I trust he sees a people that look recognizably Anglican.

Read it all.

It is possible that in future stories reporters will widen their lens a bit and include more of the “common folk” and a few experts to give some context for what is happening in the Anglican Communion. Naturally enough, reporters on deadlines tend to go to people they know will give them good quotes.

In addition, the articles here featured no reaction from outside the United States ”” however, writers can’t cover everything in one article. This may be a case of “apres GC 2009, le deluge.” Such reaction will undoubtedly occur, and will make its way into future stories. But I hope that American reporters remember that there still are (a dwindling) number of conservative laypeople (c’mon, let’s hear from the people who pay the bills) and clergy inside the Episcopal Church, and think to ask them how they feel about both the Anglican Communion and the aftermath of General Convention. That would liven up the stories considerably.

Read it all.

Has Rowan Williams just set the Church of England on the road to disestablishment? Or does he envision it as standing outside the central body of Anglicanism that he is trying now to erect? I have just read carefully throughhis response to the American Church’s recognition of equal gay rights, and there are two things that are really striking about it. The first is familiar from his earlier struggles with the matter: a certain airy disdain for the facts of the struggle in hand and the simple mutual hatred which has driven it for the last 20 years.

Read it all.

In a statement July 29, the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity noted Archbishop Williams’ concern for maintaining the unity of the Anglican Communion through common faith and practice based on Scripture and tradition.

The Vatican office “supports the archbishop in his desire to strengthen these bonds of communion, and to articulate more fully the relationship between the local and the universal within the church,” the statement said.

“It is our prayer that the Anglican Communion, even in this difficult situation, may find a way to maintain its unity and its witness to Christ as a worldwide communion,” it added.

The Episcopal Church’s general convention adopted two resolutions that may further strain relations within the Anglican Communion and with the Catholic Church: One affirmed that all ordained ministries, including the office of bishop, are open to all the baptized, including gays and lesbians; the other called for the collection and development of theological resources for the blessing of same-sex unions.

Read it all.

In Archbishop Rowan’s quick essay of 27 July 2009, “Communion, Covenant, and our Anglican Future,” he rightly perceives our tension; and he writes, at best, descriptively of our present Anglican situation. He is certainly correct in acknowledging that the Episcopal Church yearns to remain in Anglican communion. But he is also correct that ongoing decisions in The Episcopal Church have been the occasion for anxiety in some other parts of the communion.

Though descriptive, Archbishop Rowan’s essay also dips into diagnosis and prescription. In some of these matters, he will be open to theological critique. A primary critique will certainly be directed toward his repetition of the common perception that homosexuality is a “chosen lifestyle.” Within two paragraphs, he uses “chosen lifestyle” and “choice” three different times.

The Episcopal Church’s General Convention resolutions concerning homosexuality have never claimed that homosexuality was simply a choice, or, much more, a “chosen lifestyle.” Rather, Episcopal leaders have realized, over time, that being gay or lesbian was definitely not a choice for those members of our Church. Indeed, for many heterosexual persons, the realization that homosexuality is not chosen at all ”“ no more than heterosexual persons choose their heterosexuality””has been the turning point in their ability to recognize God’s grace in homosexual relationships.

Obviously, the most prescriptive of Archbishop Rowan’s remarks is his suggestion, again, that the Anglican Communion of churches might develop a “two-tier”, or, less provocatively, a “two-way” structure of formal Anglicanism. One way of being Anglican would stress the values of local faith and theology, and local autonomy; the other way would stress the values of more global, and probably more ordered, forms of the church.

I find it curious that Archbishop Rowan repeats the language of “choice” not only in relation to homosexuality, but also in relation to Anglican Communion matters. He suggests that there may be those who will, in good faith, decline a covenanted structure. He implies that those who “elect this model” will also “not take official roles in the ecumenical interchanges and processes in which the ‘covenanted’ body participates.”

Read it all.

Read it all, the sermon from last Sunday at Saint Michael’s Charleston.

Public hearings over Kenyan constitutional reforms lead to a shouting match and police intervention last week in Mombasa. The role of Sharia law within Kenya’s civil code prompted sharp disagreements between the Anglican Bishop of Mombasa, the Rt. Rev. Julius Kalu and Sheikh Khalifa Mohammad, chairman of the Council of Imams and Preachers of Kenya (CIPK).

The push for constitutional reform in Kenya began in the early 90’s, but took on added intensity following the 2007 elections, that sparked communal violence in what had been one of Africa’s “model democracies”.

Read it all.

Watch it all and here is a challenge for blog readers. I think every youth ministry in whatever parish where you worship should be challenged to discuss this issue whether through this report or another. Contact your youth minister or youth leaders and see if it has happened and if it hasn’t ask why not–KSH.

Sad to say, just one year after the affirmations of Anglican Church unity made at the Lambeth Conference of 2008, the USA Anglicans have decided that one year was enough of a wait. Their recent decision to affirm same sex relationships will deepen the split in the world-wide communion. All the Lambeth conversation groups (”˜indabering’) bought only one year’s reprieve.

The efforts of the Archbishop of Canterbury have proved fruitless as he admits in his 27 July reflections to the world-wide Anglican Communion, Communion, Covenant and our Anglican Future which concerns the decision of the Anglican Church of the USA (TEC) at their 2009 General Convention to affirm same sex relationships.

The reflections contain his strong statement of the unacceptability of same sex relationships…

I remain convinced that a more open and robust conversation between bishops at the Lambeth Conference 2008 would have shortened the pain of separation.

Read it all.

See what you make of her distillation.

The Archbishop of Canterbury says: “ ”¦ no Anglican has any business reinforcing prejudice against LGBT people, questioning their human dignity and civil liberties or their place within the Body of Christ.” We in CA agree with that. The “particularly bitter and unpleasant atmosphere of the debate over sexuality, in which unexamined prejudice is still so much in evidence and accusations of bad faith and bigotry are so readily thrown around” which the Archbishop describes is bitter and prejudiced exactly because of the church’s traditional teaching about homosexuality.

He then recommends a course of action which does just that ”“ reinforces prejudice and questions human dignity and our place in the Body of Christ. The Archbishop writes that it is hard to see how a partnered lesbian or gay person “can act in the necessarily representative role that the ordained ministry, especially the episcopate” requires because “a person living in such a union cannot without serious incongruity have a representative function in a Church whose public teaching is at odds with their lifestyle.”

That puts the Archbishop of Canterbury at odds not just with the supporters of Changing Attitude but with the majority of the bishops, priests and lay people of the Church of England. Members of our congregations no longer believe that the church can draw lines where it used to. The CofE I know has always ordained partnered lesbian and gay people. Bishops have turned a blind eye to the partners of lesbian and gay clergy. With the advent of Civil Partnerships the majority and priests and laity can see no reason why the church should not bless those unions and that is true even of FoCA and HTB churches. Couples are welcome by most congregations who see no reason why faithfully partnered people should not be ordained and minister to them.

Read it all.

But Jefferts Schori’s sentiments were largely dismissed by diocese officials.

At a July 19 meeting hosted at St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, the South Carolina Diocese’s chancellor, Wade Logan, summarized his experience in Anaheim. “It really is a political convention, that’s what it turned into,” he told a gathering of about 250.

South Carolina was one of seven conservative dioceses attempting to affirm orthodoxy that were consistently marginalized and ignored, he said.

The Rev. Al Zadig, rector of St. Michael’s Church in downtown Charleston, summed up the prevailing attitude of diocese leaders. “The world is coming into the church, and the church says, ‘Have your way,’ and there’s nothing left of theology.”

But, Zadig said, he is thankful for the clarity of the moment, equating The Episcopal Church to Unitarianism. “We are not two denominations but two religions,” he said.

Read it all.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, head cleric in the Church of England, has responded to the Episcopal Church’s decision to allow the ordination of homosexual bishops. Saying that a change in Anglican teaching, if necessary, would require broader agreement, he proposed a “two-track” church structure which recognizes “two ways of being Anglican.”

On July 14, the Episcopal Church’s General Convention voted to approve homosexual bishops. It was seen as a rejection of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s and the Anglican Communion’s call for a moratorium on the practice.

Writing in a July 27 document titled “Communion, Covenant and our Anglican Future,” Archbishop Williams said the wording of the resolution showed that it did not want to “cut its moorings from other parts of the Anglican family.” The two most controversial resolutions, he said, do not have the “automatic effect” of overturning the moratoria on homosexual clergy.

However, he said the resolutions do not suggest the General Convention will “repair the broken bridges into the life of other Anglican provinces” and have led to the expression of “very serious anxieties.”

Read it all.

U.S. House Democratic leaders, struggling to reach an accord with party dissidents on health care, said they’re likely to miss President Barack Obama’s August deadline for legislation overhauling the medical system.

“It doesn’t look like it to me,” House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel said in an interview. “I really hoped that we could have gotten a bill out of here by now,” he said, adding that he has a “heavy political heart.”

Obama, who has made revamping health care the centerpiece of his domestic agenda, had urged the House and Senate to each pass versions of the bill before their monthlong August recess so negotiations on a compromise could begin when they return. He’s seeking to provide health coverage to tens of millions of Americans who lack it and curb the soaring cost of care.

Read it all.

Police arrested 7 men in North Carolina and charged them with terrorist activities that have their roots in Afghanistan and Pakistan and date back to the 1980s, before a few of them were born.

From left are four of those arrested: Ziyad Yaghi, Mohammad Omar Aly Hassan, Hysen Sherifi and Daniel Patrick Boyd, who looks like Opie.

Boyd and his two sons hail from rural North Carolina and lo these many years, Father Boyd has been plotting against his country, if the charges are true. For 20 years or more, this has been simmering.

Read the whole thing.

From here:

On Tuesday, July 28, the Standing Committee, the Deans and the Bishop of the Diocese of South Carolina met at the Church of the Good Shepherd. The atmosphere was prayerful, focused, intense, deeply trusting of one another and the Bishop, and with a sense that the stakes are very, very high. There was broad general agreement about the basic direction the Diocese needs to take. The Bishop will give the arguments for this direction and specific suggested steps at the clergy gathering on August 13.

For the record, the meeting went from 10:30 to about 9 p.m.–KSH.

Because the blog went caput this series was not able to be finished. But did you notice how almost no aspect of the ecumenical dimensions of our decisions came into play, esepcially in the two highly publicized decisions?

On July 27, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori notified the standing committee that the necessary consents to the ordination and consecration of the Rev. Kevin Thew Forrester as bishop of the diocese were not received within the prescribed time period and therefore his election was “null and void.”

The committee’s statement said, “We invite the wider church to reflect with us on what this experience can teach us about the episcopal search and consent process. Among the issues ripe for discussion are how bishops and standing committees can best be made aware of the particular needs of individual dioceses, and how new communications technologies affect the consent process. We hope that out of our disappointment can come a deeper understanding of the ways in which we can all be accountable to one another as members of the body of Christ.”

Read it all.

The rejection of Thew Forrester comes just a day after Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the spiritual head of the Anglican Communion, criticized the Episcopal Church for departing from church tradition by lifting a de facto ban on gay bishops and allowing blessings for same-sex unions. The Episcopal Church is the U.S. branch of the Anglican Communion.

“This could be taken as a strong shout from two different places about the importance of doing theological work on our foundations,” said the Rev. Kendall Harmon, canon theologian for the Diocese of South Carolina, which voted against Thew Forrester.

Thew Forrester, rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Marquette, Mich., said in a statement that “I have been extraordinarily blessed and honored to walk with my friends from the Diocese of Northern Michigan over these past months as their bishop-elect.”

“As we live and move and have our being in Christ, there is truly a Holy Wisdom in all that is unfolding, and as St. John of the Cross affirms, a face in `all that happens,”‘ Thew Forrester said.

Read it all.

We are still going. They just ordered dinner. This is not easy.

A number of literary sayings crossed my mind when I saw that the Archbishop of Canterbury has (finally, today) issued a statement in response to the actions of the Episcopal Church’s General Convention, which ended ten days ago. The first thought that came to me was a paraphrase of T.S. Eliot’s line, “This is the way the Communion dies, not with a bang but a whimper.” Because, although I pray that I am wrong, there isn’t nearly enough in Rowan Williams’ statement to reassure me that this isn’t the Anglican Communion’s fate. Indeed, the very weakness (and studied ambiguity) of Dr. Williams’ statement may be a factor in pushing the Communion toward that end.

Read it all.

Ten days ago, we elves published two blog entries which gave information about how the bishops voted on the various roll call votes (related to Resolutions D025 and C056) during General Convention.

The first post was an unofficial tally of all three roll call votes (For the record, this was a T19 exclusive, the work of T19 readers (with indispensable help from the Rev. George Conger and the live reporting of bloggers at Stand Firm, BabyBlue Anglican and the Lead), NOT an exclusive by David Virtue, in spite of his claim to the contrary when he published our table without so much as even a link or a thank you.) The second blog post was a look at how the Anaheim Statement signatories voted.

We’re wanting to update both tables, but before doing so we really need to get a copy of the official roll call tally for Resolution C056. If any reader can assist us, we’d be grateful.

The other day, David Virtue published a link which appears to be the official roll call vote for D025 (it is a scan of a 4 page fax) We are happy to report that having compared that tally against our unofficial table, the results match perfectly.

It is perhaps worth noting that the two corrections we had made to George Conger’s tally at the Living Church, appear to be valid. George Conger had reported that Keith Whitmore of Atlanta (formerly the diocesan of Eau Clair) voted no on D025, however our review of the audio indicated a YES vote, and that is what the official tally shows as well. Whitmore is a YES on D025. Conger also had not recorded a vote for Scott Mayer, Diocesan of Northwest Texas (his vote was inaudible on the audio). We’d seen a published source claiming Mayer voted NO and so that was what we published. The official tally does indeed record that Mayer voted NO on D025.

It is also worth noting that the current list of Anaheim Statement signatories is up to at least 34 and perhaps 35 (Virtue adds Charles Jenkins of Louisiana as a signatory – can any reader from Louisiana confirm that?). You can see the full list of 34 names as confirmed by The Living Church here.

Again, please let us know if anyone finds the official tally for C056. Thanks.

The meeting started at 10:30. We are still meeting. The atmosphere is focused, intense, deeply trusting of one another and the bishop, and with a sense that the stakes are very very high.

What, after all of this, is the future for ordinary faithful Anglicans in the United States, whether in the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA) or the Episcopal Church? The strong implication of Williams’s argument is that for both groups, the best and brightest future is with the Anglican Covenant. Both ACNA itself and the Communion Partners within the Episcopal Church have expressed their desire to sign on to the covenant, and while difficulties no doubt exist in both situations there is no reason to think that forward progress cannot be made by both parties. Where more serious difficulty exists, at present, is with those elements within ACNA that do not share an interest in the proposed covenant, as well as those places within the Episcopal Church that do not have the oversight of a Communion Partners bishop. Those who do have one or the other, however, can and should be confident in their ability to work from where they are for the good future of the covenanted Anglican Communion.

In my recent article, “Brave New Church,” I expressed a lack of confidence in the direction of the Episcopal Church’s leadership. But I do have confidence in the Communion Partners dioceses, both in where we stand and in where we’re going. In my case, that means the diocese of Dallas, where I’m just now finishing up a summer internship, and my home diocese of North Dakota, where I’m a candidate for holy orders. I have good friends in ACNA too, many of whom recognize just as I do the need to work for the common covenanted future of the Anglican Communion.

We recognize that now is not the time for animosity and division; now is the time to work for the good of the entire Communion, wherever we may stand on the issues. That, I think, is where Rowan Williams is pointing us, and it’s my hope and belief that he’ll be in our corner as we work together for the Anglican future.

Read it all.

Well, it’s outre, I know, but I sort of believe in marriage. I believe in the act of committing for life to another person. I believe in the power and the joy of facing your life as a team. I think you can have a very happy, fulfilled life without being married, and before I met Peter, I was preparing to. But my life is even happier and more fulfilled with him. So naturally, I want to start building that life as Team McSudelman.

There’s a reason for the social role of “spouse”. And there’s a reason for all of the legal and social systems that have grown up around that role: they reinforce and strengthen it. It would be much harder to do many of the things we want and intend to do, for and with each other, without that useless little piece of paper.

But more to the point, once we’d decided to do what spouses do, why wouldn’t we, well, become official spouses?

Read it all.

For God alone my soul waits in silence, for my hope is from him. He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be shaken. On God rests my deliverance and my honor; my mighty rock, my refuge is God.

Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us.

–Psalm 62:5-8

“We are frankly tired of being told we ‘haven’t done the theology,'” said Integrity President Susan Russell, “when the truth is that there are those in our wider Anglican family who do not agree with the theology we have done. But what we can do is keep doing it. We can keep reaching out. We can keep working together with our communion partners on mission and ministry all over this Worldwide Anglican Family of ours with those who will work with us. And we can stay in conversation with those who won’t.

Because we recognize that those who have been waiting for the casting-out-of-TEC-into-outer-darkness are not getting what they want. And as we continue to move forward in mission and ministry with those who embrace historic Anglican comprehensiveness, we believe those “outer darkness” threats are going to ring more and more hollow until they fade away altogether.

And meanwhile, we can live into the liberated-for-mission message our General Convention sent home from Anaheim and bless those who come to us asking for the church’s blessing on their already-blessed-by-God relationships and raising up into ALL orders of ministry those who God calls into vocations of deacon, priest and bishop.

Read it all.

Do not underestimate just what a significant moment in the life of the Anglican Communion these opening ten paragraphs are. Rowan has laid out in no uncertain terms that to bless same sex relationships is, at present, an un-Christian thing to do, that to ordain and consecrate such people is completely outside the bounds of catholic ecclesiology and furthermore, arguments in favour of doing so that ultimately simply appeal to the moral stance of modern western society is not acceptable theology.

Blimey! That’s even more blatantly conservative then his speech at the 2005 AAC in Nottingham and marks a clear line in the sand from Rowan. It is an absolutely unequivocal endorsement (for the moment) of the traditional theology on sexual activity and a conservative biblical anthropology. We can expect some pretty annoyed responses to this from the revisionist camp.

Read it all.

To accept without challenge the priority of local and pastoral factors in the case either of sexuality or of sacramental practice would be to abandon the possibility of a global consensus among the Anglican churches such as would continue to make sense of the shape and content of most of our ecumenical activity. It would be to re-conceive the Anglican Communion as essentially a loose federation of local bodies with a cultural history in common, rather than a theologically coherent ”˜community of Christian communities’.

–Archbishop Rowan Williams yesterday