The Episcopal Church “cannot be kicked out of the Anglican Communion and will never be kicked out of the Anglican Communion,” the chairman of the Anglican Consultative Council told a seminary audience last week.

In a public conversation with the dean of the School of Theology of the University of the South held on 11 Feb 2016, the Rt. Rev. James Tengatenga said the legal and ecclesial structures of the Anglican Communion did not permit the primates, or any other “instrument of communion”, to discipline a member church.

Dr. Tengatenga said that in his view, the impression that the primates could take decisive action arose from a confusion of roles. In most provinces, bishops were tasked with preserving the doctrine and teaching of the church. When bishops gathered in mass in gatherings such as the Lambeth Conference, or when the leaders of provinces met at the primates meeting, the participants were often under the impression that their deliberations had the same standing as they would have in their home churches.

Read it all.

In Palo Alto, Calif., the shrill horn of incoming trains bring a constant reminder of young lives lost too soon. For the last seven years, Caltrains have been the suicide technique of choice among teenagers in the Silicon Valley town, where the adolescent suicide rate has soared to five times the national average.

It was in this way that a bright, popular, goofy kid named Cameron Lee ended his life in November 2014. By then, his classmates at Henry M. Gunn High School were all too accustomed to this sort of inexplicable tragedy. They hailed, after all, from a part of the country that had become known for its affluence, technical ingenuity and the number of kids that had been pushed to the brink.

“I am 15 years old and I just organized a memorial,” Isabelle Blanchard, the sister of one suicide victim, told The Atlantic.

It is an eerie refrain that has played out again and again.

Over the course of nine months in 2009 and 2010, six Palo Alto teenagers committed suicide.

Read it all.

“The high points of the calling to serve God in His Church are the times when he works to draw people to himself. The times when hearts begin to thaw with his love, eyes open to his light, and shoulders lift as He comes alongside to bear burdens, as those who have carried around guilt, like in the Pilgrim’s Progress, that has weighed down memory with regret and shame know a freedom and release they never dreamt possible, as those who assumed that they had no worth realise their inestimable and infinite worth to God.

“God works through his Spirit to draw people to open their hands to receive his love and transforming power – and we have the huge privilege of seeing this happen. For me some of the most memorable and grace-filled moments of the last three years have been seeing God at work in the lives of those who would not call themselves Christians, but who I have had the privilege of seeing gently and profoundly drawn to Jesus Christ.

“This is our duty, our privilege and our joy. There is nothing like it.

Read it all.

In Uganda, during the eight years in the 1970’s when Idi Amin and his men slaughtered probably half a million Ugandans, “We live today and are gone tomorrow” was the common phrase.

We learned that living in danger, when the Lord Jesus is the focus of your life, can be liberating. For one thing, you are no longer imprisoned by your own security, because there is none. So the important security that people sought was to be anchored in God.

As we testified to the safe place we had in Jesus, many people who had been pagan, or were on the fringes of Christianity, flocked to the church or to individuals, asking earnestly, “How do you prepare yourself for death?” Churches all over the country were packed both with members and seekers. This was no comfort to President Amin, who was making wild promises to Libya and other Arab nations that Uganda would soon be a Muslim country. (It is actually 80 per cent Christian)….
It became clear to us through the Scriptures that our resistance was to be that of overcoming evil with good. This included refusing to cooperate with anything that dehumanizes people, but we reaffirmed that we can never be involved in using force or weapons.

…we knew, of course, that the accusation against our beloved brother, Archbishop Janani Luwum, that he was hiding weapons for an armed rebellion, was untrue, a frame-up to justify his murder.

The archbishop’s arrest, and the news of his death, was a blow from the Enemy calculated to send us reeling. That was on February 16, 1977. The truth of the matter is that it boomeranged on Idi Amin himself. Through it he lost respect in the world and, as we see it now, it was the beginning of the end for him.

For us, the effect can best be expressed in the words of the little lady who came to arrange flowers, as she walked through the cathedral with several despondent bishops who were preparing for Archbishop Luwum’s Memorial Service. She said, “This is going to put us twenty times forward, isn’t it?” And as a matter of fact, it did.

More than four thousand people walked, unintimidated, past Idi Amin’s guards to pack St. Paul’s Cathedral in Kampala on February 20. They repeatedly sang the “Martyr’s Song,” which had been sung by the young Ugandan martyrs in 1885. Those young lads had only recently come to know the Lord, but they loved Him so much that they could refuse the evil thing demanded of them by King Mwanga. They died in the flames singing, “Oh that I had wings such as angels have, I would fly away and be with the Lord.” They were given wings, and the singing of those thousands at the Memorial Service had wings too.

–Festo Kivengere, Revolutionary Love, Chapter Nine

[See here for further information, and, through the wonders of the modern world, you may also find a copy online there].

O God, whose Son the Good Shepherd laid down his life for the sheep: We give thee thanks for thy faithful shepherd, Janani Luwum, who after his Savior’s example gave up his life for the people of Uganda. Grant us to be so inspired by his witness that we make no peace with oppression, but live as those who are sealed with the cross of Christ, who died and rose again, and now liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

O Heavenly Father, subdue in us whatever is contrary to thy holy will, that we may know how to please thee. Grant, O God, that we may never run into those temptations which in our prayers we desire to avoid. Lord, never permit our trials to be above our strength; through Jesus Christ our Saviour.

And immediately he left the synagogue, and entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon’s mother-in-law lay sick with a fever, and immediately they told him of her. And he came and took her by the hand and lifted her up, and the fever left her; and she served them.

That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. And the whole city was gathered together about the door. And he healed many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.
And in the morning, a great while before day, he rose and went out to a lonely place, and there he prayed. And Simon and those who were with him pursued him, and they found him and said to him, “Every one is searching for you.” And he said to them, “Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also; for that is why I came out.” And he went throughout all Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons.

And a leper came to him beseeching him, and kneeling said to him, “If you will, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I will; be clean.” And immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. And he sternly charged him, and sent him away at once, and said to him, “See that you say nothing to any one; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, for a proof to the people.” But he went out and began to talk freely about it, and to spread the news, so that Jesus could no longer openly enter a town, but was out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.

–Mark 1:29-45

David Walker, Bishop of Manchester

A play that portrays Jesus as a transgender woman who refers to God as ‘Mum’ is to be performed in a Church of England church today.

To the fury of critics who say the play is deeply offensive, the Bishop of Manchester, David Walker, will not block the staging of The Gospel According To Jesus, Queen Of Heaven.

The one-woman play by Jo Clifford, an award-winning Scottish playwright who has herself changed gender, imagines Jesus returning to earth as a ‘trans woman’ and retelling the parables with a transsexual slant.

Read it all

[BUMPED for topical reasons]

Canon David Porter and his team are introduced by David Walker, Bishop of Manchester – he who thinks portraying Jesus as a transgendered woman is fine in his diocese.

Watch it all or listen here

See also related posts:
+ John Bingham: CofE’s teaching on marriage ”˜up for discussion’ to accommodate same-sex couples (February 17, 2016 at 1:32 pm)
+ Archbishops of York and Canterbury: Reply to letter from Jayne Ozanne and co-signatories (February 17, 2016 at 1:14 pm)

Read it all carefully.

My teenage son recently informed me that there is an Internet quiz to test oneself for narcissism. His friend had just taken it. “How did it turn out?” I asked. “He says he did great!” my son responded. “He got the maximum score!”

When I was a child, no one outside the mental health profession talked about narcissism; people were more concerned with inadequate self-esteem, which at the time was believed to lurk behind nearly every difficulty. Like so many excesses of the 1970s, the self-love cult spun out of control and is now rampaging through our culture like Godzilla through Tokyo.

A 2010 study in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science found that the percentage of college students exhibiting narcissistic personality traits, based on their scores on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, a widely used diagnostic test, has increased by more than half since the early 1980s, to 30 percent. In their book “Narcissism Epidemic,” the psychology professors Jean M. Twenge and W. Keith Campbell show that narcissism has increased as quickly as obesity has since the 1980s. Even our egos are getting fat….This is a costly problem.

Read it all.

Sue Klebold, the mother of Columbine killer Dylan Klebold, told ABC News’ Diane Sawyer that when the Columbine tragedy happened, she couldn’t stop thinking about the victims and their families.

“I just remember sitting there and reading about them, all these kids and the teacher,” Klebold said in an exclusive interview that will air in a special edition of “20/20” Friday at 10 p.m. ET on ABC.

“And I keep thinking– constantly thought how I would feel if it were the other way around and one of their children had shot mine,” she continued. “I would feel exactly the way they did. I know I would. I know I would.”

Read it all and the full 20/20 videos are worthwhile if you are ready for the INCREDIBLY difficult subject matter.

..The Rt. Revd Thomas Wilson, Bishop of Freetown, whose diocese covers Hastings, Sierra Leone, and the Rt. Rev. Emmanuel Tucker, Bishop of Bo met the Mayor and members of the Hastings Sierra Leone Friendship Link in the Mayor’s Parlour at Hastings town hall on Tuesday (February 9th ).

The Bishops were breaking their journey from Canterbury, where they have been on a course, to Chichester by calling in at Hastings. Chichester Diocese is closely linked to the Anglican churches in Sierra Leone and West Africa generally.

Read it all

The Anglican Diocese of Freetown with support from the Trinity Church in the United States of America is providing Ebola prevention kits to its Mission Schools in the country…

Read it all

…Whanganui Anglicans are expressing “understandable concern” about a rethink of how their services are delivered, Christ Church vicar Stuart Goodin says.

A local governance team has come up with a set of 11 proposals, including transition to just one parish, possibly with all services held at Christ Church in Wicksteed St and St Chad’s church moved to the same central property.

St Laurence’s in Aramoho, St Barnabas’s in Durie Hill and St Oswald’s in Westmere would be sold.

Under the proposals, All Saints’ in Whanganui East and St Luke’s in Castlecliff may be revamped. And services may be held at St Peter’s in Gonville while Christ Church is earthquake strengthened.

Change is needed because Anglican congregations are ageing and diminishing and resources are stretched. The changes would ensure a steady future for the denomination in the district.

Read it all

..The Year of Jubilee for Singapore indeed became the year of the Lord’s favour for many of our parishes and deaneries. The Diocese was immensely blessed financially and responded to this blessing by cancelling the building-related loans of some of our deaneries and parishes that totalled about S$ 2 Million. This sparked a ripple of joyful praise and glorious freedom in God across the Diocese.

I also thanked God for significant growth and movement in different parts of our Diocese. God’s work in Nepal has been truly outstanding. Over the last year, since the double earthquake, the number of people worshipping the Lord in the Deanery of Nepal has grown from 9,000 to about 12,000 through baptisms and confirmations. A wonderful experience of amazing Kingdom advance! We learn yet again that ”˜hunger for God’ and ”˜desperation’ are the vital antecedents for Revival.

That brings me to my invitation to one and all to make this season of Lent a time of intentional prayer and fasting. “Lent” has already begun with Ash Wednesday falling on the third day of the Lunar New Year on 10th February this year. It will last for 40 days (not including Sundays) and lead up to the celebration of Jesus Christ’s resurrection on Easter Sunday. It is a reflective period when we ”˜re-live’ the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Cross dominates our thoughts and our emotions, leading us to deep contrition, deep awareness of God’s grace, deep surrender and deep desire for God and His glory.

How can you and I enter the spirit of Lent and emerge stronger pilgrims and disciples of the Lord? Allow me to suggest a 3-pronged approach:…

Read it all

On Saturday, February 13th, the Prayer Week for Christian Unity began in Egypt. Leaders from a number of denominations gathered at All Saints’ Cathedral at the center of Cairo in Zamalek to pray and worship together. Leaders from the following churches were present:

The Anglican Communion
The Armenian Catholic Church
The Armenian Orthodox Church
The Catholic Church
The Coptic Evangelical Church
The Coptic Orthodox Church
The Egyptian Council of Churches
The Greek Orthodox Church
The Middle East Council of Churches

These many leaders prayed and sang together and gave short messages on the meaning of “rolling the stone together”, in reference to removing the stone from the tomb of Jesus. Some of these messages highlighted the many different stones that must be removed in life, others spoke to the stones that so often guard our hearts, and others still showed how these stones can be used to build bridges.

The service was accompanied by the All Saints’ Cathedral Choir and attended by a large number of people.

By praying and worshiping, all to the same purpose, these diverse denominations were brought together in unity. At the height of the service, bread was broken amongst all the great leaders present. As the service concluded, this much-blessed bread was passed out to many of the congregants. The service was a powerful reminder that sometimes the strength of the Church can arise from even division itself when churches come together in loving, passionate, and world-changing unity.

Read it all

Our dear friends,

Please pray for Bishop Ghais Abd El-Malek, our retired bishop of Egypt and the former President Bishop of Jerusalem & the Middle East. Bishop Ghais has been critically ill for almost a month now during which he was hospitalized three times. Pray also for Mrs. Fawzia Ghais and the family as they take care of him.

Thank you for your prayers!

Yours in Christ,

+Mouneer

Read it all

Why is the Middle East in flames and Russia on the rampage? In both Europe and the Middle East, it is common to hear the blame placed on Barack Obama. The US president, it is charged, is a weak and disengaged leader who has allowed international events to get out of control. Many Americans ”” both liberals and conservatives ”” make the same accusation. Sarah Palin, darling of the American right, has called Mr Obama “capitulator-in-chief”. Roger Cohen, a New York Times columnist, has blamed Syria’s agony on the “fecklessness and purposelessness” of the Obama administration.

Those who yearn for a more muscular US foreign policy often assume that Mr Obama will prove to be an aberration ”” and that the next president will “put America back in the game”. But that could well be a misreading of the underlying direction of US politics and foreign policy. The current frontrunners in the presidential election campaign ”” Donald Trump on the Republican side and Bernie Sanders for the Democrats ”” have embraced ideas that are isolationist, in all but name. If those ideas prevail, they would make Mr Obama look like a super-engaged internationalist.

Even if Mr Trump and Mr Sanders never get close to the White House, the popularity of their campaigns, and their influence on the more mainstream candidates, suggests that there is now a strong constituency in the US for a retreat from globalism: repudiating international military and economic commitments.

Read it all.

Now the new tolerance does not start with the assumption that there is such a thing as objective truth or objective right and wrong or objective beauty and ugliness. And, therefore, it does not start with the assumption that any given viewpoint or belief is objectively better than one that believes something different, because there is no objective truth or morality out there for an idea to conform to. And so the old tolerance becomes impossible. Tolerance no longer means defending a person’s freedom to tell me I am wrong, but now means renouncing the right to tell anyone they are wrong. The very concept of labeling a person’s idea as wrong or defective or harmful or evil is considered intolerant.

So the new tolerance is the requirement that nobody pass judgment on another person’s beliefs or ideas as less true, less right, less beautiful. And the reason I say this is a new form of intolerance is that in the new tolerance I am forbidden from expressing my belief that certain things are so; namely, that your beliefs are wrong or harmful ”” dangerous. In fact, the new tolerance sometimes goes so far as not just to forbid the expression of my belief that your belief is wrong, but goes further and forbids me even from believing that you are wrong because, they would say, believing that shows I am hateful and a danger to society and eventually may be locked away or punished in some other way for simply holding a viewpoint. If you want to read more about the development of this new tolerance, then Don Carson’s book The Intolerance of Tolerance is the place to go.

So my answer to the question that was asked is: Absolutely, Christians should be tolerant of other people’s religious beliefs; namely, with the old tolerance, not the new tolerance.

Read it all.

Blessed Lord, who wast tempted in all things like as we are, have mercy upon our frailty. Out of weakness give us strength; grant to us thy fear, that we may fear thee only; support us in time of temptation; embolden us in time of danger; help us to do thy work with good courage, and to continue thy faithful soldiers and servants unto our life’s end.

Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
For consider your call, brethren; not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth; but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom, our righteousness and sanctification and redemption; therefore, as it is written, “Let him who boasts, boast of the Lord.”

–1 Corinthians 1:20-31

Listen to it all.

It started about three years ago with briefs about vigils for people who died from heroin overdoses. Terry DeMio saw them now and then. One day, a coworker at The Cincinnati Enquirer mentioned that someone in her neighborhood had a heroin addiction.

“I just remember thinking there was something to this,” said DeMio, who was then a general assignment reporter.

So she called a hospital system in Northern Kentucky, St. Elizabeth Healthcare, and told the spokesperson about what she was seeing. He connected DeMio with a physician. On one particular day, that doctor told her, about a third of his patients were addicted to heroin or linked to someone who was. It was the first time DeMio heard the term “heroin epidemic.”
She started writing about heroin for both the Enquirer and its northern Kentucky edition, unsure at the beginning if the term epidemic even applied.

Three years later, she’s quite sure.

Read it all.

Read it all and see how you do.

Read it all and see how you do.

Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives:

I embrace with great satisfaction the opportunity which now presents itself of congratulating you on the present favorable prospects of our public affairs. The recent accession of the important state of North Carolina to the Constitution of the United States (of which official information has been received), the rising credit and respectability of our country, the general and increasing good will toward the government of the Union, and the concord, peace, and plenty with which we are blessed are circumstances auspicious in an eminent degree to our national prosperity.

In resuming your consultations for the general good you can not but derive encouragement from the reflection that the measures of the last session have been as satisfactory to your constituents as the novelty and difficulty of the work allowed you to hope. Still further to realize their expectations and to secure the blessings which a gracious Providence has placed within our reach will in the course of the present important session call for the cool and deliberate exertion of your patriotism, firmness, and wisdom.

Read it all.

..As you know, it was described as a Primates’ Gathering and Meeting, as the Meeting proper could only include those provinces which are recognised as institutionally part of the Anglican Communion (as distinct from churches which have an Anglican tradition and identity). To be part of the institution of the Anglican Communion, a Province must be in communion with the See of Canterbury. That was upheld as it had been understood previously at the Lambeth Conference of 1930, and was often repeated, most recently in the Eames Report 3.32. And also a Province has to be on the schedule of Provinces held by the ACC and supported by two thirds of the Primates in one way or another. There is no clear process or precedent for a new Province to join, except as an agreed spin-off from a previous Province.
……………………
…The underlying issue is about reception. Both before, but especially since, Lambeth 1920, reception has meant the informal process by which, over time, developments are accepted or rejected in a way that leads to consensus. Thus, issues in 1920 around contraception, in Lambeth 1930 and 1948 around divorce, were at the time seen as threatening the unity of the Communion as seriously as issues of human sexuality now. Reception goes both ways. There has been a consensus against lay presidency, despite significant pressure in the past, but the reception process rejected it. It is not a legal process, but a discernment of the Spirit based in relationship.

The importance of this is very great indeed. The Anglican Communion finds its decisions through spiritual discernment in relationship, not through canons and procedures. Those operate at Provincial level. All developments must show signs of the presence of the Spirit, not only locally but across the Communion. Primates’ Meetings, Lambeth Conferences and ACCs are not a question of winning and losing, but of discerning.

Read it all and see also quite a bit of comment this has led to:
+ [Canon Phil Ashey] Anglicanism in spite of Canterbury? (February 16, 2016 at 7:56 pm)
+ Andrea Williams: ”˜No unity at the expense of truth’: a response to Justin Welby’s Presidential Address (February 17, 2016 at 1:41 pm)
+ [Ian Paul] Order, freedom and human flourishing (February 17, 2016 at 1:47 pm)

General Synod is now over until July.
See below for reports:

Wednesday February 17th
Report on Wednesday Morning Business
Report on Wednesday Afternoon Business
Wednesday Morning’s timetable – Order Paper
Wednesday Afternoon’s timetable – Order Paper
Topics: Impact of sanctions on benefit claimants; Renewal and Reform; Ministerial Education, Resourcing the Future

Tuesday February 16th
Report on Tuesday Business – [Audio of Sessions here]
Tuesday’s timetable – Order Paper
Topics: Evangelism; Relations with the Presbyterian Church of Scotland while keeping the Scottish Episcopal Church onboard; Wedding and Funeral Fees; and Simplifying unbelievably cumbersome Church Legislative Procedures

Monday afternoon February 15th
Report on Monday PM Business – [Audio of Sessions here]
Monday’s timetable – Order Paper

Presidential Address by the Archbishop of Canterbury on the Primates Gathering 2016

Update from Canon David Porter on the Shared Conversations on Sexual Immorality planned for General Synod in July [Listen here]

Questions

â–  Press release about Agenda
â–  Timetable [See order papers for each day above]
â–  Full Daily Agenda and Timetable [pdf]
â–  Brief Agenda and Papers
â–  Live Video Feed when in session or perhaps listen here for prior recordings
â–  Twitter: #synod and it may be worth following: CofE Official Synod tweets; and @C_of_E if interested.

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