The discovery of the corpses of young people on the streets and in rivers is fuelling terror and fear in the capital of Burundi, church sources in the country reported this week.
The sources, who asked to remain anonymous out of concern for their safety, fear a possible genocide. One source believes that the UN must send peacekeeping forces to the country “without delay”.
Teach us, O God, to walk trustfully today in thy presence, that thy voice may encourage us, thine arm defend us, and thy love surround us; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
–New Every Morning (The Prayer Book Of The Daily Broadcast Service) [BBC, 1900]
And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders, I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth; and he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne. And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and with golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints; and they sang a new song, saying,
“Worthy art thou to take the scroll and to open its seals,
for thou wast slain and by thy blood didst ransom men for God
from every tribe and tongue and people and nation,
and hast made them a kingdom and priests to our God,
and they shall reign on earth.”
Then I looked, and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all therein, saying, “To him who sits upon the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might for ever and ever!” And the four living creatures said, “Amen!” and the elders fell down and worshiped.
–Revelation 5:6-14
Coventry Cathedral will take part in a vigil for Burundi tomorrow (Friday) as the African Union warn of an impending genocide in the east African country. And staff at the Anglican Communion Office in London will pause to pray for peace for the troubled country.
There has been increasing violence over the past few months and an attempted coup following the decision by President Pierre Nkurunziza to seek re-election for an unprecedented third term ”“ an election that he won.
Earlier this month a boy was killed and two people injured during an attack on St Mark’s Church in the Ngagara district of the capital Bujumbura. He was one of several hundred to have been killed since the violence began. Friday of last week saw the deadliest day of the violence with around 100 killed in clashes.
Nonetheless, [Roger] Scruton overstates his case a bit. It’s true that there is much disagreement about Human Rights at the global level. But within Europe? I wonder whether the absence of agreement on particular cases makes today’s commitment to Human Rights all that different, as a practical matter, from yesterday’s commitment to Christianity. It’s not like Christians have always agreed among themselves on what Christianity requires for law and politics, either. (See: The Protestant Reformation). May Christians divorce and remarry? May they use artificial contraception? Some Christian communions say yes, others no. Do these disagreements mean Christianity is useless as a means of ordering society? I wouldn’t think so. Besides, even if one disagrees with it, there is a consistent European Court jurisprudence on many human-rights questions.
I suppose the response would go something like this. Fundamentally, Human Rights ”“ at least, the dominant secular version ”“ denies the basis for any objective truth claims. So there’s no way to resolve any issue, other than deferring to individual subjectivity, which is no basis for a legal system. It’s not a matter of a few difficult cases here and there, but the whole run of possible cases. Without a commitment to some objective value, something other than individual choice, the whole system will ultimately collapse.
Did you catch the subtle, but very important, difference between the lede and the actual quote from the document?
The lede says that it is wrong for Catholics ”“ which would mean priests, laypeople and other Catholic individuals ”“ to try to win Jewish individuals to Christian faith. But what does the document say? It says that the Catholic Church, as an institution, “neither conducts nor supports any specific institutional mission work directed towards Jews (italics added).”
So evangelism by individual Catholics talking with individual Jews is acceptable, while organized efforts targeting Jews alone ”“ perhaps a Catholic version of Jews for Jesus ”“ are considered out of bounds.
Thus, the headline and the lede need to be corrected to reflect the actual content of the story and the document on which it is based.
Wheaton administrators insisted it was Hawkins’ comments ”” not her decision to wear a hijab ”” that was at the root of the problem. She was asked to provide a theological response to several other statements as well, though the college did not provide details.
Denny Burk, a professor of biblical studies at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., said his greatest concern about Hawkins’ explanation was the lack of clarity about the particulars of Christianity. Without further explaining the nuances of her argument, she implicitly denied Christian teachings, he said.
“We’re people of the book, but our books are very different,” he said. “They’re witnessing to two different ways of salvation. The Bible is witnessing to Jesus Christ, the son of God. That’s unique of all the world religions, and that uniqueness was what I thought was missing from what she said.”
But Miroslav Volf, a theology professor at Yale Divinity School and founding director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture, praised Hawkins’ gesture as extraordinary and an apt Advent devotion. He said her comments about Christians and Muslims worshipping the same God speak to the common ground the two religions share.
t sounds like there is some anxiety on the part of the ACoC. Could it be that they are worried about being excluded themselves, of being tied too closely to The Episcopal Church (TEC) and its repeated violations of Biblical and communion teaching on human sexuality, Biblical authority, and the mind of the Church in its decision making on these issues?
It will be difficult for them to differentiate themselves from TEC, for it was the decision of the ACoC Diocese of New Westminster in 2003, along with TEC’s consecration of a partnered homosexual bishop, that originally tore the fabric of the Anglican Communion.
Since then, consider the “facts of the ground” (taken from Martin Davies’ recent paper) that the ACoC has established in Canada….Frankly, this follows exactly the pattern we saw in the United States in TEC: create facts on the ground in violation of the Bible, and then call for “theological reflection” upon those facts-that-you-have-just-established.
Burundi is on the verge of civil war because of a campaign of political repression in which at least 400 people have been killed and almost 3,500 arrested, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein said on Thursday.
Six months have passed since Dylann Roof allegedly shot and killed nine parishioners at an Emanuel AME Church Bible study.
The funerals are over. The flowers and tributes have thinned out on the Calhoun Street church’s sidewalk. President Barack Obama and his press corps have long since left town.
Charleston is trying to move toward normal again, but Deborah Stewart still misses Myra Thompson.
“She wasn’t just my sister-in-law,” Stewart said. “She was my friend.”
Read it all (and note the headline used above is from the print edition).
Two contract extensions in spite of the fact that the City councillors unanimously said no to the rezoning application. Two extensions in spite of the feelings of the neighbours who want the church to remain a church and in spite of the hopes and prayers of local congregations who are longing for usable worship space. Preserve a church as a church? Why do that when you can reap an extra million dollars by selling to a developer who specializes in high-density construction?
The words of Bill Mous, spokesperson for the Diocese, ring hollow to anyone who has a stake in the neighbourhood surrounding the church property. The Diocese “cares deeply for Guelph”? This community does not feel cared for.
In a development that few Episcopalians of four or five years ago could have imagined, the Episcopal bishops of the most powerful and financially secure dioceses have begun to turn on their own once-strong, but now severely weakened, parishes. Having driven out all the dissenters at enormous expense to their coffers, these dioceses are increasingly trying to make up their losses by sacrificing valuable real estate — even if it means turning out previously loyal congregations from their hard-won property. And — who could have foreseen it? — the parishes most harmed by the continuous litigation were precisely those with the most valuable properties.
A prime example is the Diocese of Los Angeles, led by the litigious J. Jon Bruno — he of the forkèd tongue. For nine years he waged war in the California courts against four dissident congregations to prevent them from keeping title to their own parish properties. Using the notorious Dennis Canon, he was singularly successful in having California courts impose an irrevocable trust on the local parishes’ real estate, so that when they voted to withdraw from the diocese, they necessarily forfeited all rights to their property.
But his victories came at a tremendous cost: the Diocese had spent more than eight million dollars as of last year, and was still incurring more costs to subsidize two of the remnant congregations in their newly recaptured sanctuaries. Bishop Bruno negotiated sales of two of the properties: the parish of All Saints Long Beach was allowed to purchase their property on a long-term contract, and he sold the church of St. David’s in North Hollywood to a private school.
O God, Father of mercies, who didst so love the world that thou didst give thine only begotten Son to take our nature upon him for us men and for our salvation: Grant to us who by his first coming have been called into thy kingdom of grace, that we may always abide in him, and be found watching and ready when he shall come again to call us to thy kingdom of glory; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.
Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and pay your vows to the Most High; and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.
–Psalm 50:14-15
Evidence suggesting senior clergy tried to cover up sex abuse by an Anglican bishop has been uncovered by the BBC.
Two priests raised concerns about Peter Ball but were urged to keep quiet or saw no action taken, it has emerged.
And a couple who worked for now-jailed Ball, former bishop of Lewes and Bishop of Gloucester, said they also tried to raise concerns but were ignored.
Ball’s offending is the subject of an independent review and a national inquiry is looking at Church abuse.
I will take comments on this submitted by email only to KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.
Hiltz also said that after his meeting with Welby, he came away “encouraged by his [Welby’s] clarity in terms of what the Primates’ Meeting is and what it’s not.”
The Primates’ Meeting “is not a decision-making body””it’s a body for people that come together to pray and discuss and discern and offer some guidance. We don’t make resolutions,” Hiltz said.
Since it was announced that Archbishop Foley Beach, the leader of the breakaway Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), would be present for the first part of the meeting, Hiltz said there has been concern in some quarters over whether or not attempts will be made to confront The Episcopal Church (TEC) over its decision this year to allow same-sex marriages. But Hiltz said Welby was quite clear that the meeting would not exclude any of the primates of churches that are members of the Anglican Communion.
“His principle is one of full inclusion of all the primates. I think he will encourage, and if need be, challenge, the primates to uphold that principle,” Hiltz said.
Wheaton College, a prominent evangelical school in Illinois, has placed a professor on administrative leave after she posted on Facebook that Muslims and Christians “worship the same God.”
The official school statement Tuesday about associate professor of political science Larycia Hawkins’s suspension said Wheaton professors should “engage in and speak about public issues in ways that faithfully represent the College’s evangelical Statement of Faith.”
Following a protest and sit-in of about 100 people Wednesday afternoon on campus, President Philip Ryken and later Provost Stanton Jones said they would not be lifting the suspension. It wasn’t clear how long Hawkins was suspended for, but some of the student leaders who had been involved in talks with administrators said it was through the spring semester.
The Archbishop of Canterbury has invited more young Christians to join the Community of St Anselm at Lambeth Palace.
Applications are now open for the second year of the programme, which offers people aged 20-35 the opportunity to spend ”˜a year in God’s time’ as they live together as a community inspired by the monastic traditions.
The participants commit to a year of prayer, studying theology and ethics, and serving the poorest in local communities, adopting a pattern of life devoted to Jesus Christ that monastics down the centuries would recognise.
The parallel is inexact, but peoples and cultures also have to deal with the power of hard memories. Painful traumas and experiences can be passed down generation to generation, whether it is exile, defeat or oppression. These memories affect both the victims’ and the victimizers’ cultures.
Many of the issues we have been dealing with in 2015 revolve around unhealed cultural memories: how to acknowledge past wrongs and move forward into the light.
The most obvious case involves American race relations. So much of the national conversation this year has concerned how to think about past racism and oppression, and the power of that past to shape present realities: the Confederate flag, Woodrow Wilson, the unmarked sights of the lynching grounds. Fortunately, many people have found the courage to tell the ugly truths about slavery, Jim Crow and current racism that were repressed by the wider culture.
Prof Percy critiques Archbishop Welby’s decision to invite Archbishop Foley Beach of the breakaway Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) to attend the Primates’ meeting, without consulting the official Episcopal Churches in the USA and Canada, and suggests:
”˜So the Archbishop of Canterbury could begin proceedings in January by offering an apology to American and Canadian Anglicans for his intemperate gestures towards ACNA, and his lack of consultation, which has undermined them. He should further apologise for dealing in territories and spheres of authority that are simply not his to meddle with.’
He also warns against using the widespread belief that the Anglican churches of the global south now form the majority and are the only ones growing numerically to cede ”˜more moral ground”¦to African churches”¦than might be judicious’ in divisive debates over sexual ethics.
If the Federal Reserve proceeds as expected and raises US interest rates for the first time in almost a decade on Wednesday it will be an affirmation of what Janet Yellen and her fellow policymakers see as the strength of the US recovery.
It will also be at odds with what many in the US’s industrial economy are seeing.
From manufacturing behemoths like Caterpillar and Deere & Co to companies supplying the industrial sector the common theme in recent months has been that, thanks to a strong dollar and a collapse in commodity prices, tough times are back. Some are going so far as to declare the arrival of an industrial recession.
O God, who didst send thy messengers and prophets to prepare the way of thy Son before him: Grant that our Lord when he cometh may find in us a dwelling prepared for himself; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who came to take our nature upon him that he might bring many sons unto glory, and now with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, ever one God, world without end.
After this I looked, and lo, in heaven an open door! And the first voice, which I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet, said, “Come up hither, and I will show you what must take place after this.” At once I was in the Spirit, and lo, a throne stood in heaven, with one seated on the throne! And he who sat there appeared like jasper and carnelian, and round the throne was a rainbow that looked like an emerald. Round the throne were twenty-four thrones, and seated on the thrones were twenty-four elders, clad in white garments, with golden crowns upon their heads. From the throne issue flashes of lightning, and voices and peals of thunder, and before the throne burn seven torches of fire, which are the seven spirits of God; and before the throne there is as it were a sea of glass, like crystal. And round the throne, on each side of the throne, are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind: the first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with the face of a man, and the fourth living creature like a flying eagle. And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all round and within, and day and night they never cease to sing, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!”
–Revelation 4:1-8
A spokesman for the Winchester Diocese said: “Canon Jeremy Davies made an application earlier this year for permission to officiate in the Diocese of Winchester.
“Due to the Church of England’s position on same sex marriage, as set out in the House of Bishops’ Pastoral Guidance, Canon Jeremy Davies has been informed that his application has been unsuccessful.”
Forward in Faith has published a new book entitled Fathers in God? Resources for reflection on women in the episcopate.
The Chairman of Forward in Faith, the Rt Revd Tony Robinson, has commented: “To some our theological case is well-known, but others say not just that they disagree with it but that they do not understand it. It is over nine years since the General Synod briefly debated the theology. In the Church of England at large there is at least one generation to whom it has never been presented. We are committed to upholding all of the Five Guiding Principles. In publishing this book we are not seeking to re-open what the second Principle calls the Church of England’s ”˜clear decision’. But the fourth Principle bases provision for us on the fact that we hold a legitimate Anglican ”˜theological conviction’: we therefore feel obliged to articulate what that theological conviction is. And the third Principle locates the Church of England’s decision within a ”˜broader process of discernment within the Anglican Communion and the whole Church of God’: this book contributes to that process.”
According to a blogger in the ancient Iraqi city of Mosul, ISIS (also known as ISIL) leaders there have issued a “fatwa” against children with Down syndrome and other birth defects.
The only source for the story is the Mosul Eye, self-described as a “blog ”¦ set up to communicate what’s happening in Mosul to the rest of the world , minute by minute from an independent historian.” It has been repeated by dozens of mainstream and niche news sites, from the British Daily Mail through Fox News to Breitbart.
According to the Mosul Eye’s December 14 Facebook entry, “the Shar’i Board of ISIL issued an ‘Oral Fatwa’ to its members authorizing them to ”“ in the fatwa’s words, ‘kill newborn babies with Down’s Syndrome and congenital disorders and disabled children.'”
The Right Reverend Martyn Snow (aged 47), studied at Sheffield University and then trained for the ministry at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. He served his first curacy at Brinsworth with Catcliffe and Treeton in the diocese of Sheffield from 1995 to 1997. He worked for the Church Mission Society in Guinea, West Africa from 1998 to 2001.
Across the world, higher education is linked to higher levels of employment and life evaluation, making it the proverbial ticket to a great job and a great life. But the most recent evidence suggests that the link between higher education and graduates’ readiness for today’s rapidly changing workplace may be broken, says Brandon Busteed, Gallup’s executive director of education and workforce development.
Read it all and you can watch the address also.