The Resurrection of Jesus is “the collapse of all that is familiar and well known.” Well, Professor [James] Alison is a scholar-theologian. I’m just a simple curate, and I’ll put it this way: Easter means that Jesus is alive and normal is dead. Nothing, not even death, is certain, and in fact death is defeated, has met its match in Love Himself.

The tomb is empty ”“ empty as in vacant; empty as in powerless. Death ”“ life’s great certainty; the most normal, expected, routine, trustworthy thing going, in fact a sure thing, has come untrue in Christ.

And now anything can happen, and love is the winning bet. That stone that lay across the tomb is pushed aside, and so the great rock of despair is blown to bits by the great Yes of the Living God who has given himself to us and for us in Jesus Christ.

Read it all and please note the audio is available here.

Vicars and other church leaders in Leeds are being taught to Tweet and use other social networking systems as part of a campaign to improve communications between the clergy and congregations.

A free training programme designed to up-date vicars on new media communications has been launched by a Christian media organisation in a bid to bring clergy into the digital age.

Read it all (requires subscription).

Hungary’s Ambassador to the Holy See is rather perplexed by the negative reaction of some European figures and institutions to his country’s new Constitution — a document he sees as offering a possible impetus to a “Christian renaissance” in Europe.

“We think it’s a little bit strange to hear such voices,” Ambassador Gábor GyÅ‘riványi told ZENIT March 27th. “The real founding fathers of the European Union planned to base the Union on Christian values, and expressed the notion that European democracy can only be viable if constructed on the Christian basis.”

The preamble of the new Constitution, or “Fundamental Law,” which came into force Jan. 1, contains references to God, Christianity, and traditional family values. It further stipulates that the life of a fetus be protected from the moment of conception (abortion remains legal, however, in cases where the mother’s health is threatened).

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The numerous liberal Catholic appointments in the diocese of Southwark are causing increasing concern for evangelicals, in a row that is threatening to split the diocese. The Bishop of Southwark, the Rt Rev Christopher Chessun, has appointed liberals to the last seven senior vacancies in the diocese, including the Cathedral Dean and Bishop’s Chaplain.

Attending a meeting of the Southwark Diocesan Evangelical Union (DEU) last Monday, many felt he failed to satisfy the concerns of the 100 people in attendance. The Rev Stephen Kuhrt later said: “He has been politically naïve,” and called the situation an ”˜absolute gaffe’. The vicar, who chairs Fulcrum, did not doubt Bishop Christopher’s integrity, but claimed he had been very badly advised. Fulcrum, while a more moderate evangelical Anglican group, joined Reform in the condemnation of the appointments, claiming the views of evangelicals were not being heard.

Read it all. Also, please peruse the Church Times article there as well.

Crimes against humanity in Sudan and South Sudan must be stopped ”” or the British Government will be guilty of allowing the horrors of Rwandan-style genocide to be repeated, Baroness Cox has warned.

In the wake of reports of ethnic cleansing in the Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile regions of Sudan, Lady Cox told the House of Lords on Mon­day of last week that the Gov­ern­ment must take a more robust approach.

“After Rwanda, the British Gov­ernment famously said that they will never condone another genocide, but this is precisely what they are now perceived to be doing.” The “powerful intervention” by Britain into Libya raised questions about whether its foreign policy was influ­enced by racism, she said.

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Not the least of the church’s problems now is the growing number of highly educated, formerly prominent Mormons who have left the LDS and are only too ready to tell the world exactly why.

As a molecular biologist studying forest trees in Brisbane, Australia, Simon Southerton was in many ways a Mormon role model. He was 10 years old when his parents joined the church and he was baptised into the faith in 1970. He rose steadily through the ranks and became a bishop to his flock. Over the years he was vaguely aware that some of the historical events described by the Book of Mormon did not match the archeological or scientific record. “But I hadn’t dwelt on it,” he said. He loved his church for its emphasis on families and the sense of community it fostered.
Yet there was one key aspect of church doctrine that began to trouble him. The Book of Mormon describes a migration of Israelite clans across the Atlantic to America long before Columbus. The notion of a New Jerusalem, founded on American soil by the ancient forefathers of Mormonism, is one of the faith’s key tenets. Yet Southerton, familiar with the use of DNA to chart early human migrations, began to worry about the sheer weight of scientific evidence undermining the Book of Mormon’s account.

“Once I started looking at it seriously, it didn’t take me very long at all to realise that the Book of Mormon wasn’t real history,” he said. According to Mormon doctrine, Native Americans are descended from one of the Israelite clans. “But there’s been no serious mainstream belief in anything other than Asian origin for Native Americans for much of the last century,” Southerton added.

Read it all (requires subscription).

Please note this older article predates the news about the Congo and AMIA which broke late this week; it nevertheless has important details not found elsewhere–KSH.

The split has fractured the AMiA’s 150 congregations. While no numbers have been released by the AMiA, a majority of its congregations appear to have left Bishop Murphy’s oversight””including Bishop Murphy’s former parish and the AMiA’s headquarters, All Saints Church in Pawleys Island, South Carolina.

One faction appears set to join the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), a second group has pledged its loyalty to the Church of Rwanda but will seek to operate under the oversight of the ACNA, while a third remains with Bishop Murphy and his bishops. Negotiations to find an accommodation are currently underway between the Murphy faction and the ACNA, however the terms publicly set by Archbishop Duncan include reconciliation between Rwanda and the [Chuck] Murphy group.

Read it all.

(Please note that we first covered this upcoming meeting back in March.–KSH)

Bishop [Michael] Nazir-Ali said the manifesto was now “the only game in town” to prevent the fragmentation of the Communion.

“The Covenant has gone, the primates have been unable to gather, Lambeth had a significant number of bishops missing, a large number of leaders from the Global South have resigned from the main Anglican committees ”“ so that causes us all a great deal of concern,” he said.

He added: “The Jerusalem Declaration is not perfect by any means and no doubt can be improved, but at the moment it seems to be the only thing that a large number of people could subscribe to in good conscience.”

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Prosecutors have uncovered more financial fraud in church networks than they ever imagined. “It took the financial downturn. Money was drying up””the new investors were not coming in, so Ponzi schemes collapsed,” IRS Special Agent in Charge for Criminal Investigations Ken Hines told Christianity Today.

Hines, based in Seattle, has helped expose Ponzis for more than 20 years. He has seen first-hand how the church environment has proven to be an ideal context for affinity fraud. “When you go to church, you don’t expect to get lied to or deceived or manipulated into losing your life’s savings….”

The sickening net effect of fraud puts a dark cloud over pastors and other leaders in local churches….If a faithful church member cannot trust his or her own pastor, whom can they trust?

Read it all.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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Almighty God, who broughtest again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the glorious Prince of Salvation, with everlasting victory over sin and the grave: Grant us power, we beseech thee, to rise with him to newness of life, that we may overcome the world with the victory of faith, and have part at last in the resurrection of the just; through the merits of the same risen Saviour, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end.

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life– the life was made manifest, and we saw it, and testify to it, and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us– that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you may have fellowship with us; and our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And we are writing this that our joy may be complete. This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. 6 If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not live according to the truth; but if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.

–1 John 1:1-7

The other was the Californian, a small steamer that had stopped about ten miles from the Titanic””unlike the doomed ship, it had heeded the ice warnings””and sat there all through that terrible night, disregarding the Titanic’s frantic signalling, by wireless, Morse lamp, and, finally, rockets. Not all of this was as inexplicable as it seems: the Californian didn’t have a nighttime wireless operator. (All passenger ships were subsequently required by law to have round-the-clock wireless.) But no one has ever sufficiently explained why the Californian’s captain, officers, and crew failed to respond to what seemed like obvious signs of distress. The second officer merely thought it strange that a ship would be firing rockets at night. If Lord had been given to large interpretations, he might have seen in the one ship a symbol of the urgent force of human striving and, in the other, the immovable resistance of sheer stupidity.

Read it all (especially if you missed it last time).

Take a careful look.

The full text of the front page top left article may be read there.

For the preachers of 1912, Titanic was the ultimate symbol ”” not of the past, but of modernity and the dawn of a century in which ambitious tycoons and scientists would solve most, if not all, of humanity’s thorniest problems.

The liner was, in other words, a triumph of Darwinian logic and the march of progress. Its sinking was a dream-shattering tragedy of biblical proportions.

The events of April 14-15, 1912, are the “closest thing that we have to a modern-day Bible story,” according to Douglas Phillips of TitanicSociety.com, in an essay saluting those who went down with the ship. “Everything about Titanic was larger-than-life: her conception, her launch, her sins, her heroes and her judgment. …

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At 11:40pm on Saturday night, the exact time the Titanic struck the iceberg that led to its sinking less than three hours later, Rev Chris [Bennett] will lead a vigil that will feature a virtual choir, a reading of Titanic’s SOS messages and a reading aloud of the names of those who were lost.

“Lips may wobble,” he admitted.

“This city will truly, properly pay a profound and heartfelt tribute to that tragic moment which shook so many lives, echoed around the world and [which] still resounds down through the decades.”

Read it all.

Oxford University’s Bodleian Library is working with the Vatican’s library to open up their treasures to millions of readers across the world.

It will see two of the world’s oldest libraries putting their repositories of ancient texts on line.

The Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, in the headquarters of the Catholic Church, is one of the few libraries in the world with historical collections to rival those held by the Bodleian.

Read it all and you may also find a piece of interest here on Vatican Radio.

Lord Carey argues that in “case after case” British courts have failed to protect Christian values. He urges European judges to correct the balance.

The hearing, due to start in Strasbourg on Sept 4, will deal with the case of two workers forced out of their jobs over the wearing of crosses as a visible manifestation of their faith. It will also take in the cases of Gary McFarlane, a counsellor sacked for saying that he may not be comfortable in giving sex therapy to homosexual couples, and a Christian registrar, who wishes not to conduct civil partnership ceremonies.

Lord Carey, who was archbishop from 1991 to 2002, warns of a “drive to remove Judaeo-Christian values from the public square”. Courts in Britain have “consistently applied equality law to discriminate against Christians”.

Read it all.

Take this two minute quiz: Did you know”¦.

Ӣ That the Book of Common Prayer had been translated into 200 languages, including Mohawk, as far back as the 17th and 18th centuries?

Ӣ That there was a campaign to get a bishop for the Church of England in America as early as 1704?

”¢ That in the month of October, 1831, this country saw one of the greatest revivals of religion it had ever envisioned ”“ and it started in Beaufort, SC?

Read it all (page 15).

It used to be that once a book was printed, the text would remain unchanged for extended periods. Not so any more. Authors can update their works and almost instantaneously create a new version. Electronic books are far less bound by time and space.

Print books rely on written words and pictures. Electronic books can expand to include music and other sounds, animation, and movies. The possible outcome is less traditional reading….

With so many new kinds of reading sites such as blogs and wikis, demand for traditional length books may decline. On the other hand, the convenience of electronic readers may encourage people to read more.

Read it all.

On just about any Sunday, as many as 10,000 people may fill the pews of The Potter’s House, Bishop T.D. Jakes’ Dallas-area megachurch. Believers say he has an uncanny way of connecting with his audience anyway.

“It doesn’t matter about the size,” says Faith Johnson, a 13-year member. “It’s almost like nobody else is in that church, but me.”

It takes some help for leaders of the largest megachurches and national ministries to make believers reject the idea that a smaller church is more intimate and personable. A big staff of associate pastors and elders is indispensable.

Read it all.

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood sent tens of thousands of members pouring into Tahrir Square…[recently] in an Islamist show of force as the country turns toward a presidential election scheduled for May 23.

Smaller Islamist groups joined the Brothers on Tahrir, all venting their anger at the felool, or remnants of former President Hosni Mubarak’s regime, who many say are a threat to Egypt’s revolution. The Brotherhood had kept its supporters off the streets since winning parliamentary elections at the end of last year. But the entrance of Omar Suleiman, a long-time confidant and spy-chief of the deposed Mubarak, into the race and legal maneuvers to have some of the Islamists’ own candidates disqualified brought them out…[this week].

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In 2004 a man serving on our vestry decided to leave his wife after only two years of marriage. There was no adultery, no abandonment, nothing. He’d just grown tired of her and wanted to find someone new. He and I were close. I trusted him. He’d been instrumental in saving my job. When liberal members of Good Shepherd, upset over the stance I had taken with regard to Gene Robinson, called a parish meeting at another local Episcopal Church trying to gather support to have me ousted, this man rallied my supporters and showed up at the meeting with the majority of the congregation behind him.

So when he came seeking my blessing for his divorce he may have expected me, for the sake of our friendship and his past loyalty, to give it. Instead I told him that he needed to step off of the vestry. I told him that in order to remain a member in good standing he’d need to halt his divorce proceedings, go to a Christian marriage counselor, and commit to reconciliation.

He refused.

Read it all.

Dear Dr. Moore,

My wife and I are at an impasse. There’s been no abandonment, no sexual immorality, and no abuse. We just don’t get along. We shouldn’t have married. We should have known we are incompatible. I know God hates divorce but I don’t have any other option. My pastor and some Christian counselors have told me that while God hates divorce, this is the lesser of two evils because God doesn’t want me to be miserable. What do you think?

Married but Miserable….

Read it all.

On the decline of institutional Christianity

“Institutional religion in the United States ”” institutional Christianity in particular ”” is much, much weaker today than it was 40 years ago. But religion itself is as strong as ever. … But the eclipse of institutional faith, and the eclipse of what I would say was a kind of a Christian center that the country used to have, has created a landscape where religion divides us much more than it used to.”

On heresies

“The heresies that I write about are what flourish in the vacuum that’s left by institutional Christianity’s decline. So if the country remains religious, but the institutional churches are weaker than they used to be, what steps into the breach?”

Read or listen to it all.

Somalia’s Islamist terror group al Shabab wants to rid the Muslim country of all Christians and is specifically targeting Christian converts from Islam.

Al Shabab recently joined with al Qaeda and wants Sharia law implemented in the country.

An al Shabab video that swept the Internet in September 2008 shows the brutal beheading of 25-year-old aid worker Mansour Mohammed. His crime? Mohammed converted to Christianity in 2005.

Read it all.

A Special Message from the Chairman, Chuck Murphy:

At the close of this year’s Winter Conference, we issued a Communiqué expressing the mind of the gathering. One of the key components and goals of that Communiqué, as well as subsequent communications from our Council of Bishops, was to “diligently seek appropriate jurisdictional connections” with an authentic and orthodox Anglican Communion province. As we continue to celebrate our Lord’s Resurrection during this Easter season, it is a particular joy to report the good news that our goal has now been realized. This week, I received an official letter from Archbishop Henri Isingoma of the Anglican Church of the Congo, receiving me as a Bishop of the House of Bishops in his Province and offering us a new canonical residence. In response to a recent letter from Archbishop Rwaje asking our bishops to translate to another Anglican jurisdiction by the end of this month, I had earlier requested that he send my letters dimissory to the Province of the Congo.

This transfer follows a process of relational reconciliation with Rwanda facilitated by Archbishop Eliud Wabukala. These conversations culminated in our meeting in Johannesburg and the Communiqué in which Archbishop Rwaje agreed to release theAM to develop other jurisdictional relationships. Under our accord with the Province of the Congo, we are now secure and validly attached to the global Anglican Communion. Rooted in the East African Revival, the Province of the Congo [formerly Zaire] was originally joined together as one larger province, which also included Rwanda and Burundi. In 1992, all three were subsequently established as separate provinces. The Anglican Mission’s connection with the Congo began at Winter Conference 2012 when Bishop William Bahemuka Mugenyi generously made provision for scheduled ordinations to go forward.

We are very grateful to Archbishop Henri for his warm welcome to the Province. As we continue to transition toward a Mission Society with oversight provided by a College of Consultors, we remain committed to the multi-jurisdictional model that launched the Anglican Mission in Singapore (the Provinces of Southeast Asia and Rwanda). Toward that end, conversations with other jurisdictions including the Anglican Church in North America will continue.

Now that a new canonical residence provides for our bishops and clergy to transfer from Rwanda to the Congo, I have been asked to facilitate the transition and therefore, requests for transfers should be sent to the Mission Center.

We look forward with great anticipation to the multi-layered process of developing a Mission Society designed to encase our values and facilitate our desire to be a mission, nothing more and nothing less. While we continue our consistent focus on planting churches in North America, our process will include careful consideration of our present structures including the roles of bishops, the Mission Center and its staff, and our Networks as we prepare to develop the constitution and statutes that will ultimately order our common life. We are scheduling several meetings in which we will discuss and seek input from clergy and leaders throughout the Mission to assist us in designing and vetting the shape and specific details of our proposed Mission Society. We expect to complete these conversations by mid-October.

The Council of Bishops and our leadership team are united in a vision to further develop and carry forth an Apostolic/missionary (sodality) call to reach those outside the faith in effective, creative and entrepreneurial ways. This journey is well underway, and we invite and encourage you to celebrate and press on with us.

In Christ,

–(The Rt. Rev.) Charles Murphy is Chairman, AMIA

Almighty God, whose blessed Son did as on this day rise again for us, victorious over sin and the grave: Grant that we, being risen with him, may set our affection on things above, not on things on the earth; that when he who is our life shall appear, we may also appear with him in glory; through the same our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling– if indeed, when we have taken it off we will not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan under our burden, because we wish not to be unclothed but to be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. So we are always confident; even though we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord– for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we do have confidence, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. For all of us must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil.

–2 Corinthians 5:1-10