US legal battle is postponed again: CEN 5.01.09 p 7 April 30, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Fort Worth, Property Litigation, San Joaquin.comments closed
Deputy Constable Smythe serving the Rt. Rev. Jack Iker with the lawsuit
The first legal test of the Episcopal Church’s claim that dioceses are subordinate creatures of the national church and may not secede at will, has been postponed for the sixth time by a California court.
On April 27 the Fresno County Superior Court announced that it had again rescheduled hearings originally set down for Feb 25 in the case of the Episcopal versus Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin.
Hearings on a motion for summary judgment brought by Bishop Jerry Lamb and the Episcopal Diocese against Bishop John-David Schofield and the Anglican Diocese, and on cross-complaint brought by the Anglican Diocese asking the court to order the national Episcopal Church to pay for the costs of litigation, including attorneys’ fees have been postponed until May 5 to enable the court more time to consider the merits of the cases.
While a majority of cases decided so far have sided with the diocese against the parish where the parish seeks to quit the diocese with its property, no court has addressed the question of whether a diocese may quit the national church. The constitution and canons of the Episcopal Church are silent on this issue, and the Dennis Canon—which states that parish property is held in trust for the diocese and church—does not on its face apply to property held by or for a diocese.
Virginia has proven the exception as a Civil War era state law permits a parish to secede from its diocese or ecclesial jurisdiction for a rival body in the case of a denominational schism. The Episcopal Church and Diocese of Virginia have appealed the trial court’s decision, arguing the law is unconstitutional.
Supporters of the parish secession movement have turned to the state legislatures in Texas and Oklahoma, seeking a change in those states laws to model the Virginia statue and allow parishes to quit their diocese and keep their property. In February, Republicans Senator Gary Stanislawski and Rep. Pam Peterson introduced legislation to “define property rights in Oklahoma so that if people in Oklahoma, whether in a church or some other nonprofit, sign on a deed for the land, they own the land. If they ever separate from the parent organization, they own the land.”
In Texas, House Bill 729 seeks to amend property laws governing churches so that in the event of a schism “a court shall order a division of the estate of the parties in a manner that the court considers just and right, having due regard for the rights of each party and any other interested person.”
Church leaders have urged the state legislatures to reject the laws. Bishop Edward Konieczny of Oklahoma argued that state’s proposed law would “effectively take any property that is held in the name of a congregation in our denomination and gives them the authority to walk away with the property.”
Litigation is currently underway between the national church and its allies against the Dioceses of San Joaquin, Pittsburgh, Fort Worth and Quincy. Last week a state constable served suit against Bishop Jack Iker, opening litigation against Fort Worth.
San Joaquin will be the first case that addresses the question of the secession of dioceses in the modern era—-10 dioceses quit the American church during the US Civil War in 1861 to form the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America, but the schism ended with the close of the war and the voluntary reunion of the southern dioceses with the national church.
The national church is seeking a ruling from the Fresno Superior Court granting it title to all diocesan properties, investments and accounts.
Election of new Zimbabwe bishop postponed unexpectedly: CEN 5.01.09 p 8. April 30, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Zimbabwe.comments closed
The April 25 election of a new bishop in succession to the Rt. Rev. Sebastian Bakare of the Diocese of Harare has been postponed, sources in Zimbabwe tell The Church of England Newspaper.
No explanation or new date for the cancelled election has been offered by the diocese or the Church of the Province of Central Africa. Four candidates had been put forward for election: the USPG’s Africa desk office, the Rev Canon Chad Gandiya; the vicar of Tattenhall, Cheshire the Rev. Lameck Mutate; the Archdeacon of Northern Botswana, Dr. Archford Musodza; and the vicar of Mbare parish in Harare, the Rev. Canon David Manyau.
The last election for a Bishop of Harare in 2001 was marred by the intervention of the CIO—Zimbabwe’s secret police, whom critics charged engineered the election of Dr. Nolbert Kunonga. From the start of his tumultuous episcopate, Dr. Kunonga was closely linked with the regime of Zimbabwe strongman Robert Mugabe. Members of the diocese accused Dr. Kunonga with soliciting the murder of clergy and lay opponents, theft and heresy. An ecclesiastical trial for his alleged crimes collapsed after witnesses declined to return to Zimbabwe in fear of their safety.
The Church of the Province of Central Africa excommunicated Dr. Kunonga after he attempted to pull the diocese out of the province, and on Nov 7, 2007 appointed the retired Bishop of Manicaland, Dr. Sebastian Bakare to serve as interim bishop. While losing almost all of the diocese’s members to Dr. Bakare, Dr. Kunonga was able to hold on to the parish properties as he maintained the backing of the ZRP, the Zimbabwe Republic Police, who refused to honor a court ruling that ordered Dr. Kunonga to share the properties.
However, the introduction of a power sharing agreement between the Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party and the opposition MDC, removed Dr. Kunonga’s protectors from their control of the security services, and earlier this month the government ordered Dr. Kunonga to share the disputed church properties, and directed the ZRP not to interfere further in the split.
While the violence appears to be subsiding in Harare, tensions are still high in the diocese of Manicaland, home to Zimbabawe’s second breakaway bishop. On April 25 the government backed Harare Herald reported that a priest aligned with Bishop Elson Jakazi—who along with Dr. Kunonga was excommunicated on May 16, 2008 for “withdrawing from the Province of Central Africa, forming another Church, and casting aside the Constitution and Canons of the Church of the Province of Central Africa.”
The retired Bishop of Harare, Peter Hatendi was appointed by the province to be the interim bishop of Manicaland following Bishop Jakazi’s ouster. Litigation between the Province and Bishop Jakazi for control of the diocese’s properties is underway, but last week supporters of Bishop Jakazi claim a mob hired by the supporters of Bishop Hatendi, assaulted a Jakazi priest sat St Agnes Church in Chikanga.
Manicaland police Inspector Brian Makomeke told the Harare Herald, the “Rev Matikiti from the Bishop Jakazi faction, who is staying at St Agnes Church in Chikanga high-density suburb, was assaulted by a mob at the church on Sunday. The incident occurred at about 7am when a group of about 100 people” led by a priest loyal to the province attempted to worship.
“A misunderstanding ensued between the two factions, resulting in Rev Matikiti being assaulted,” the Manicaland police spokesman said, and nine men are being held in custody.
Tanzania bishop calls for protection for albinos: CEN 4.24.09 April 26, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Tanzania, Church of England Newspaper.comments closed
| The Anglican Church of Tanzania has joined the battle against the discrimination and abuse of albinos. In his Easter Sunday sermon, Bishop Phillip Baji of Tanga denounced the killings of an estimated 45 albinos since mid 2007, saying the murders dishonored God and disgraced the nation.
The church called for the government to crack down on traditional healers or witchdoctors who trafficked in albino body parts. In February UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete to address the issue, saying the killings were a “gross violation of human rights.” Peter Ash, founder of “Under the Same Son,” a Canadian charity that advocates for the rights of Tanzania’s albinos, told the National Post discrimination against albinos was endemic in some of the country’s tribal cultures. Many believe albinos to be ghosts or a curse, leading to the deaths of many albino infants, he said. Those who survive to adulthood are worth up to £20,000 to witchdoctors and are killed for their body parts, Ash said. Hair, bones, skin and the blood of albinos are used to create potions by the witchdoctors who sell the concoctions top those seeking wealth or power. They “chop them up or grind them up, use them in potions or what’s called a talisman, an object they will sprinkle blood on or infuse with body parts,” he said. Approximately 200 people have been arrested in the attacks but no convictions have yet been forthcoming. “A lot of that was just people weren’t aware of it, and to some degree nobody wants to tangle with something this evil,” Ash said. “You’re looking evil in the eye when you do this.” Read it all in The Church of England Newspaper. |
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Zuma prosecution decision denounced: CEN 4.24.09 April 26, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Southern Africa, Church of England Newspaper, Politics.comments closed
| The Archbishop of Cape Town has denounced the April 6 decision by the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) to drop its investigation of African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma for corruption.
In remarks made at the Cape Town Press Club on April 20, Archbishop Thabo Makgoba said the “NPA issue will be a permanent running sore on the body politic unless we go back to the beginning. Truth starts with a proper commission of inquiry into the arms deal. Read it all in The Church of England Newspaper. |
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Education vital in battle against Aids, says Bishop: CEN 4.24.09 April 26, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Southern Africa, Church of England Newspaper, Health/HIV-AIDS.comments closed
| Malaria is on the retreat in Mozambique, the Anglican Bishop of Maputo said this week, but the strides made in recent years in combating the disease can only be maintained through education and awareness programmes.
Speaking at a press conference ahead of the World Malaria Day on April 25, Bishop Dinis Sengulane, the president of the Roll Back Malaria partnership in Mozambique, said that while nets were now available, many people in the Southern African nation declined to use them, saying that the nets disturbed their sleep or made them hot. Read it all in The Church of England Newspaper. |
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Dr. Carey — “Doctrine, not bureaucracy, must unite us”: CEN 4.24.09 p 5 April 24, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Consultative Council, Archbishop of Canterbury, Church of England Newspaper, Ecclesiology.comments closed
THE ANGLICAN Communion should be “united by doctrine and a shared faith” and not subservient to its ecclesial structures, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey has said.
Speaking to approximately 200 clergy and lay leaders of the Communion Partners initiative, a centre-right American church association meeting at St Martin’s Church in Houston, Texas, Lord Carey gave his support to the work of “Dr Rowan Williams, and other Primates in their attempts to repair what has been damaged” in the fallout following the 2003 election of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire.
He urged the Anglican Communion not to abandon the four “instruments of unity” as a vehicle for fostering church unity, and argued that further tinkering with the “bureaucratic structures” of the Anglican Communion would not resolve its problems.
“We can take the ‘New Labour’ route of throwing as many new initiatives as we want at the crisis, but the basic theological problem will remain-which is that of ‘authority’,” he said. “The Anglican Communion instruments are all we have to address the underlying ‘authority deficit’,” he noted as agreement about an Anglican Covenant “remains some way off. [But] in the meantime, the Anglican Communion has to be led and the Communion has to struggle to work as a united body.”
Lord Carey offered a sombre forecast of the Communion’s future in a wide-ranging speech that outlined the history of the creation of the “instruments of unity”: the Lambeth Conference, the Primates’ Meeting, the Anglican Consultative Council, and the Archbishop of Canterbury. “A realistic view might conclude” that it was “far from clear” if the instruments “have much of a future.” The boycott of over 300 bishops of the 2008 Lambeth conference was “an historically unprecedented event” that had “diminished” the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The boycott also “undermined the significance of the Lambeth Conference itself which was made to look additionally irrelevant by the fact it was allowed to take no decisions.” The ACC also was “an increasingly odd body” with “enhanced powers” but a miniscule budget hampered by questionable democratic legitimacy.
The “one instrument of unity that seems to have been emerging into a position of strength” has been the Primates’ Meeting, he said. But “predictably, making it more visible and authoritative” had led to vigorous resistance from the ACC, which “feels threatened by it.”
Poised against these international disputes were the struggles underway of provinces pressing for “total autonomy theologically” from the communion, while imposing “total canonical autocracy within their dioceses.” This had led to the creation of American “prince bishops” who “appear to have unfettered control over their rapidly diminishing flocks, from which all who dissent from the regnant liberalism are being driven out.”
Lord Carey proffered two questions to the group, asking what “should be done” about those provinces which have “dissented from the mind of the majority of the Communion? Can there be no hope of discipline, apart from mild reproof?” he asked.
He also asked the US House of Bishops and the General Convention to permit traditionalists a place within the Episcopal Church “without censure or opposition.” However, “all signs suggest that over time” conservatives are “likely to be cleaned out of The Episcopal Church.
“So, while the present situation is bleak, we gathered here do not give up hope,” he said, adding that the “present crisis” offers an opportunity for new leadership to arise in the US and Canada o those “who will value the Communion and align ECUSA and the Canadian Church with the rest of us. We will be waiting in hope,” he said.
Gafcon leaders speak out against centralisation: CEN 4.23.09 April 23, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of North America, Anglican Covenant, Church of England Newspaper, GAFCON.comments closed
| Political and ecclesiastical authority should reside within the provinces of the Anglican Communion and not the “instruments of unity,” eight archbishops concluded last week at the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FCA) Primates’ Council meeting in London.
In a statement released after three days of talks, the eight archbishops stated that the third province movement in North America should seek recognition first from the provinces of the Communion, bypassing the Anglican Consultative Council. On April 16 the Primates of Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, the Southern Cone, Tanzania, Uganda, and West Africa, along with the Archbishop of Sydney released a statement endorsing the formation of the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA), saying it was “authentically Anglican.” The primates affirmed the desire of their churches, representing over two-thirds of the active churchgoers in the Communion, to preserve the integrity of the Anglican Communion, but gave a muted vote of no confidence to the current draft of the Anglican Covenant and the communion’s administrative structures. Read it all in The Church of England Newspaper. |
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‘Buddhist Bishop’ losing support: CEN 4.24.09 p 6. April 23, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Northern Michigan.comments closed
Early returns from the US House of Bishops suggest the Episcopal Church’s “Buddhist Bishop” will not be affirmed as Bishop of Northern Michigan.
The Rev. Kevin Thew Forrester has been unable to hold together the left-liberal bloc of bishops that backed Gene Robinson’s 2003 election as Bishop of New Hampshire. Approximately 10 bishops who backed Robinson in 2003 have so far come out against Dr. Forrester, making it unlikely he will receive the necessary majority vote to take office from the House of Bishops.
New American bishops are affirmed in their office either by majority votes of both houses of the triennial meeting of General Convention, if the vote falls within 120 days of the meeting. Elected on Feb 21, Dr. Forrester must receive a written certificate of consent from a majority of bishops “exercising jurisdiction” in the Episcopal Church as well as from a majority of diocesan standing committees.
If a majority of bishops or dioceses “do not consent within one hundred and twenty days from the date of notification to them by the Presiding Bishop of the election, the Presiding Bishop shall declare the election null and void,” Canon III.10.5 states.
At the 2003 General Convention, of the 107 bishops eligible to vote, Bishop Robinson received 62 “yes” votes, 43 “no” votes, and two votes in abstention—which are counted as “no” votes.
At the present time there are 98 bishops with jurisdiction in the Episcopal Church, meaning Dr. Forrester must receive consents from 50 to be affirmed as Bishop of Northern Michigan. Of the approximately 25 bishops who have made public how they have voted, 22 have voted “no” according to a tally maintained by The Church of England Newspaper.
Among these 22 are 10 sees who backed Bishop Robinson. Coupled with vacancies in five liberal sees that in 2003 voted for the New Hampshire bishop, the liberal bloc of 62 votes that went for Robinson in 2003 has been reduced in 2009 to 47. While a small number of conservative sees have moved to the liberal column since 2003, it is unclear if that will be enough to overcome the current shortfall of three votes needed to secure election, if past voting patterns hold.
Initial protests to Dr. Forrester’s election came from conservatives distressed by the Northern Michigan priest’s participation in a Jukai ceremony—also known as Bodhisattva Initiation or Lay Ordination, were he received the dharma name Genpo and his rukusu robe, and recited some of the Sixteen Bodhisvatta or precepts of Buddhism.
Traditional Zen jukai ceremonies include the recitation of the mantras: “I take refuge in Buddha”; “I take refuge in Dharma”; “I take refuge in Sangha.” Details of Dr. Forrester’s initiation ceremony remain vague. However, he denied that he followed two faiths, telling the Marquette Mining Journal, “there’s one faith and it’s Christianity.” His Christian faith had been “deepened by my meditative practice and I’m eternally grateful to Zen Buddhism for teaching me that practice and receiving me as an Episcopal priest.”
While the assurance that he is a Christian has been accepted by most bishops, a number of center-left bishops have questioned the orthodoxy of his Christian beliefs, citing the bishop-elect’s sermons and liturgical innovations. The Bishop of Southern Ohio Dr. Thomas Breidenthal stated Dr. Forrester’s “understanding of the Christian narrative” was “troubling.”
In a letter to his diocese, Dr. Breidenthal wrote that “according to Thew Forrester, Jesus revealed in his own person the way that any of us can be at one with God, if only we can overcome the blindness that prevents us from recognizing our essential unity with God. The problem here is that the death of Jesus as an atonement for our sins is completely absent, and purposely so.”
“As I read Thew Forrester, nothing stands between us and God but our own ignorance of our closeness to God,” he said. This teaching “flies in the face of what I take to be the conviction at the heart of our faith tradition, namely, that we are in bondage to sin and cannot get free without the rescue God has offered us in Jesus, who shouldered our sins on the cross. Our tradition certainly declares God’s closeness to us and God’s love for us, but insists that this is solely due to God’s gracious initiative, made known to us in Jesus. In other words, Jesus in his singular closeness to God is as much a reminder of our alienation from God and from God’s ways as he is God’s word to us that we are loved despite our collective wrongdoings.”
The Bishop of Bethlehem, Dr. Paul Marshall stated “As a Church we are increasingly a laughing-stock. Not because we welcome lesbian and gay people, and carry on social ministries that enact the sacrifice of Christ on a corporate basis, and certainly not because of our latitude and the conversation it engenders. We are a laughing stock because we do not consistently proclaim a solid core, words as simple as ‘all have sinned and come short of the glory of God,” yet “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself’.”
Although a number of bishops had “significant investment in Eastern meditation-their qualification to be bishops, however, is as the chief confessors of the creeds and presidents at the sacraments. They are to be unambiguously ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through them,” Dr. Marshall said in support of his vote against Dr. Forrester.
While it is still too close to call, signs from Northern Michigan that the race may be over appeared after Easter. Following publication of extracts of his sermons and liturgies in the press, the materials were removed from his parish website. Last week however Dr. Forrester’s Easter liturgies were published on his parish website, including his Holy Saturday vigil entitled “Kindling the Sacred Fire: Sharing Stories of Life-Death-Rebirth, Receiving the Sacred Fruits of the Earth; with a section entitled “The lighting of the Paschal Candle of Birth-Death-Rebirth.”
Commentator Frank Lockwood, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette‘s religion reporter noted that this cycle of “birth-death-rebirth” is not normally associated with Christianity, but is a tenet of Zen Buddhism, citing The Tibetan Book of Wise Living, which lists “The Nine Dimensions of Breathing,” of which the ninth is “birth-death-rebirth.” It states, “death simply means a change of energy or form.”
“It would be interesting to know the difference, if any, between resurrection and rebirth, between ‘He is Risen’ and ‘His energy has changed’,” in the doctrine of Dr. Forrester, Lockwood said.
Court case targets Virginia parishes: CEN 4.17.09 p 6. April 22, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Property Litigation, Virginia.comments closed
The Diocese of Virginia and Episcopal Church have petitioned the state’s supreme court to overturn a circuit court ruling that awarded trusteeship of parish property to breakaway groups affiliated with the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA).
In its April 7 filing the diocese asked the court to return the properties to “loyal Episcopalians in Virginia,” and argued the lower court had made an error in interpreting the law, and that a statute vesting ownership with the majority faction of a congregation following a denominational schism be overturned for being unconstitutional.
The diocese asked the court to review three legal questions: “whether it is constitutional for a court to impose a congregational majority rule requirement on hierarchical churches, against their faith and traditions; whether ‘neutral principles’ should be used for resolving property disputes between congregations and denominations; and whether property may be held in trust for hierarchical churches.”
Overturning the circuit court ruling would restore the “long-cherished freedom in Virginia for churches to organize and govern themselves according to their beliefs,” the diocese argued.
A spokesman for the parishes said he was saddened by the diocese’s decision to appeal, arguing it was a dubious use of church funds. “Both sides have already spent some $5 million in legal costs, money that could have gone to helping our communities during these tough economic times,” Jim Oaks said.
However, “the legal victories we’ve had so far in support of our religious freedom have only encouraged us to stand firm in our Anglican faith and work together to deliver the message of Christ,” he said.
The exact amount spent on the US church property lawsuits is unclear. However, in financial information released earlier this year, the national church reported that it spent $4.7 million (£3.15 million) over the past three years in fighting property lawsuits and in deposing conservative bishops.
While budgeting only $100,000 in 2008 to fund property litigation, the national church spent $1.655 million. Its budget for the investigation and trial of clergy under the Title IV canons for 2008 was $350,000, but it spent $889,026. The 2009 budget for legal expenses and Title IV expenses is $600,000.
Harare bishops agree deal: CEN 4.17.09 p 8. April 22, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Zimbabwe.comments closed
A deal has been reached between the battling bishops of Harare that has allowed Anglicans to return to their churches on Palm Sunday for the first time in almost a year.
On April 1, Home Affairs Co-Minister Giles Mutsekwa, a member of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and his ZANU-PF counterpart, Home Affairs Co-Minister Kembo Mohadi, summoned the breakaway Bishop of Harare, Dr. Nolbert Kunonga and the bishop appointed by the Church of the Province of Central Africa, Dr. Sebastian Bakare to a meeting at government house to resolve the dispute between the two groups.
In 2008 a court order granted both Dr. Kunonga and Dr. Bakarer joint use of diocesan properties, pending the final adjudication of the dispute over their ownership. However, the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP), with the backing of leading elements of the ZANU-PF regime refused to honour the order, and have used force to bar Dr. Bakare’s supporters from worshipping in Harare’s churches.
The coalition MDC – ZANU-PF government formed in February, however, has seen a withdrawal of support from Dr. Kunonga by the ZRP, as the bishop’s allies in the government appear to have lost control of the security services.
On Palm Sunday, the ZRP ordered the Kunonga faction to share the church buildings, allowing both groups to hold services. Dr. Bakare told the government-backed Harare Herald, “Today we are happy that we have been allowed to use our buildings.
“I believe this has happened to all our churches. So far we have received confirmation from leaders at the Cathedral and St Andrews in Glen View that they had worshipped peacefully,” he told the Herald.
Sir Marcus Loane, Australian hero, dies: CEN 4.17.09 p 8 April 22, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper.comments closed
Australia’s first native born archbishop, the Most Rev. Marcus Loane, KBE died on April 14, following a brief illness. He was 97.
Archbishop Loane was a “formative leader in our church,” the Archbishop of Sydney, Dr. Peter Jensen said. “In national life, he offered leadership which transcended politics. In particular he spoke up for the poor and helped spark the Henderson enquiry of the early 1970s. He offered distinguished service with our troops in New Guinea during World War II.”
“He was a prolific author with an international influence and ministry,” Dr. Jensen said, but noted his predecessor would “be remembered most as one of the key architects of post-war Anglicanism” in Sydney.
Born in Tasmania in 1911, Archbishop Loane was educated at the University of Sydney and Moore Theological College and was ordained in 1935. From 1939 to 1953, he served as vice principal of Moore Theological College-serving also with the Australian Army’s Chaplain Corps in New Guinea from 1942 to 1944. Appointed principal of Moore College in 1954, he was named a suffragan bishop of Sydney in 1958, Archbishop of Sydney in 1966, and Primate of Australia in 1978, retiring in 1982.
In the 1976 New Year’s Day Honours List Archbishop Loane was appointed a Knight of the Order of the British Empire (KBE). He is survived by his wife of 71 years, Lady Loane, and their two sons and two daughters and their families.
Church files suit againt Bishop Iker: CEN 4.17.09 p 6. April 19, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Fort Worth, Property Litigation.comments closed
| The Episcopal Church’s headquarters in New York, along with a group of loyalist supporters in North Texas, has filed suit against Fort Worth Bishop Jack Iker and his diocese’s officers, seeking possession of the diocese’s properties.
In a statement released on April 14, US Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said the national church and the loyalist group were asking a Texas court to declare them the “rightful owners of all diocesan property, real and personal, including funds and endowments.” Bishop Jefferts Schori said she had been forced to act and felt “sorrow that the former diocesan leaders took such actions that led us to this time. However, this is a necessary step in order for the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth, comprised of Episcopalians of the full theological spectrum, to continue its gospel work in Texas.” Read it all in The Church of England Newspaper. |
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Euro Churches calls on Nato to give up nuclear arms: CEN 4.17.09 p 8. April 19, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Arms Control/Defense/Peace Issues, Church of England Newspaper, WCC.comments closed
| The Conference of European Churches (CEC) has joined three international church groups to call upon Nato not to enlarge its nuclear umbrella or antagonize Russia by expanding the alliance eastward.
A letter urging Nato to lay down its nuclear arms was sent to government leaders meeting April 3-4 in Strasbourg by the four church groups. Joining Archdeacon Colin Williams, the General Secretary of CEC were the General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, the Rev Samuel Kobia; the General Secretary of the US’s National Council of Churches of Christ, the Rev Michael Kinnamon; and the Rev Karen Hamilton, General Secretary of the Canadian Council of Churches. The church leaders urged NATO to undertake a “thorough reform of Nato’s Strategic Concept” and “end NATO’s reliance on nuclear weapons.” The Western alliance should “engage with nuclear weapon states and other states outside of Nato in the serious pursuit of reciprocal disarmament,” the church leaders said. Such “collective action” would “reinforce the vision of a world without nuclear weapons.” |
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Read it all in The Church of England Newspaper.
Boost for gay marriage campaigners: CEN 4.17.09 p 6. April 19, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Human Sexuality --- The gay issue, Iowa, Vermont.comments closed
| Supporters of gay marriage won two victories last week in the United States after the Vermont legislature turned back a veto by the state’s Republican governor of a Democrat-sponsored bill making marriage “gender neutral”, and the Iowa state supreme court overturned a state law banning gay marriage.
The Episcopal Bishop of Vermont, the Rt Rev Thomas Ely — who had lobbied the state legislature in support of gay marriage — on April 7 applauded the vote saying he hoped it would “inspire other states to enact comparable legislation and that ultimately the legal provisions of full marriage equality will be provided to all citizens of the United States.” The Bishop of Iowa, the Rt Rev Alan Scarfe, also endorsed his state’s move in support of gay marriage. In a Good Friday pastoral letter to the diocese, he said the ruling “clarifies for me what the issue is that is facing the Church. Like so many who support the rights of gay and lesbian people, I thought civil unions would provide adequate protection for their relationships. I began to see things differently as I heard the arguments presented in court several months ago.” Read it all in The Church of England Newspaper. |
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The Rt. Rev. David Moyer April 17, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Album (Photos), Church of England Newspaper, Pennsylvania, Traditional Anglican Communion.comments closed
The Rt. Rev. David Moyer. Rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd, Rosemont, Pennsylvania, Suffragan Bishop of the Armed Forces for the Anglican Church in America, Assistant Bishop of the Diocese of The Murray in the Anglican Church of Australia. Photo printed on April 17, 2009 in The Church of England Newspaper
Court bid to regain control of Forward in Faith parish: CEN 4.17.09 p 6. April 17, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Pennsylvania, Property Litigation.comments closed
THE DIOCESE of Pennsylvania has filed suit against the flagship parish of the Forward in Faith movement in the US, the Church of the Good Shepherd in Rosemont, seeking control of the property.
Last month’s pleading, filed on behalf of the diocesan standing committee, asked a suburban Philadelphia court to eject the Rt Rev David Moyer and his congregation from the property, arguing the parish’s secession from the diocese violates canon law which requires parish property to be “held or used for the work of the Episcopal Church.”
The battle between Rosemont’s rector and the Bishop of Pennsylvania, Charles Bennison, began in 2002, when Bishop Bennison deposed Fr Moyer for “abandoning the communion” of the Episcopal Church for contumacy. Fr Moyer filed suit against Bishop Bennison in a civil court for damages, and in a legal first persuaded the court that the bishop’s actions were so egregious that a civil review was needed. A jury in October 2008 found that Bishop Bennison’s actions did not merit redress.
After he was deposed, Fr Moyer was received by the Traditional Anglican Communion, a continuing church group, and is now a bishop within that church. Following the conclusion of the litigation last year between Bishop Bennison and Bishop Moyer the standing committee in Pennsylvania started legal proceedings to gain control of Rosemont.
“We approached the Diocese of Pennsylvania to seek an amicable solution. Now we are stunned to receive their response of aggression with the intent to terminate the life and mission of a diverse Christian community engaged in healing the sick, caring for the poor, and witnessing to the love of God as set forth in the Gospel of Jesus Christ,” Bishop Moyer said.
The congregation would “do everything possible” to remain in its historic property from whose “walls emanate the prayers of generations of faithful Anglo- Catholic men and women.” Bishop Moyer told The Church of England Newspaper the parish seeks to remain an “orthodox Anglo-Catholic” bastion dedicated to the mission and ministry of the church “while offering God worship and devotion in ritual and ceremony that aims to offer God the very best.”
Presiding Bishop … ‘Jesus is not the only way to God’: CEN 4.17.09 p 7 April 17, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Syncretism, The Episcopal Church.comments closed
JESUS is a way, but not the only way to salvation, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, the Most Rev Katharine Jefferts Schori has told members of the Diocese of Quincy.
At a special convention called by the Presiding Bishop to reconstitute the diocese around the four congregations that did not secede to the Province of the Southern Cone last year, on April 4 Bishop Jefferts Schori spoke of her own theological views at a question-and-answer session.
Approximately 300 people gave the presiding bishop a “rousing greeting on her first visit to Peoria and the Diocese of Quincy. In stark contrast to the previous synod meeting, at which she was vilified as the chief architect of what former leaders claimed was the Episcopal Church’s departure from traditional Christian beliefs, [Bishop] Jefferts Schori received a warm and jubilant welcome,” Episcopal News Service reported.
In response to a question from the audience about her personal beliefs, the presiding bishop said that to insist Jesus is the only way to God is to “limit God.” She said that God was at work in the lives of other faiths. “God is, at the very least, a mystery,” Bishop Jefferts Schori said.
“God’s intention is for a restored relationship with all humanity. My job is to proclaim the good news of Jesus, but I cannot deny God is not at work in other ways,” she said, according to ENS.
While the presiding bishop’s views on the uniqueness of Christ are considered by evangelicals outside the mainstream, they have their antecedents in Bishop John AT Robinson’s Honest to God. In the preface to his 1963 book, Bishop Robinson stated that “it is going to become increasingly difficult to know what the true defence of Christian truth requires.”
While some sought to seek a “firm reiteration, in fresh and contemporary language, of ‘the faith once delivered to the saints’,” others felt “a more radical recasting” was demanded wherein the “most fundamental categories of our theology — of God, of the supernatural, and of religion itself — must go into the melting.”
The way forward for Bishop Robinson was an end to Christian Theism, replacing it with a modern form of Modified Monism, which called for a rejection of Christian exclusivism, seeing behind all religions a Monistic oneness.
In an Oct 18, 2006 radio interview Bishop Jefferts Schori stated, “Christians understand that Jesus is the route to God. That is not to say that Muslims, or Sikhs, or Jains, come to God in a radically different way. They come to God through human experience – through human experience of the divine.”
“We who practice the Christian tradition understand him as our vehicle to the divine,” the presiding bishop told Time magazine in its July 10, 2006 issue. “But for us to assume that God could not act in other ways is, I think, to put God in an awfully small box.”
Protestant and Catholic Church leaders have largely rejected these views, from the Council of Florence’s 1438 declaration that there was “no salvation outside the church” to the 1974 Lausanne Declaration by evangelicals that there was “no salvation outside a personal and explicit confession of faith in Jesus Christ.”
In 1994 evangelical scholar JI Packer defended the exclusive role of Jesus in Jesus Christ the Only Saviour, while Cardinal Ratzinger, the current Pope Benedict XVI, in 1996 called interreligious relativism “the fundamental problem of faith in our time.”
In 2000, the Roman Catholic Church in Dominus Iesus stated “the thesis that the revelation of Jesus Christ is of a limited, incomplete, and imperfect character, and must be completed by the revelation present in other religions, is contrary to the faith of the Church…. This position radically contradicts the affirmations of faith according to which the full and complete revelation of the salvific mystery of God is given in Jesus Christ.”
“If Billy Graham or Pope Benedict” were asked the questions the presiding bishop were asked, they would respond that “Jesus is the way, the truth and light,” South Carolina theologian Canon Kendall Harmon said. In a time of doctrinal confusion, “good leadership claims its particular identity from the stability of its historical faith,” he argued.
“It’s the leadership of this church giving up the unique claims of Christianity,” Canon Harmon said. “They act like it’s Baskin-Robbins. You just choose a different flavour and everyone gets in the store.”
GAFCON primates back new North American province: TLC 4.15.09 April 17, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of North America, GAFCON, Living Church.comments closed
First published in The Living Church magazine
Following three days of closed-door talks in London, the primates of Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, the Southern Cone, Tanzania, Uganda, and West Africa, along with the Archbishop of Sydney, have endorsed the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) as being “authentically Anglican.”
The eight members of the GAFCON primates council met with the Rt. Rev. Robert Duncan, Bishop of the Diocese of Pittsburgh under the jurisdiction of the Southern Cone, and other ACNA leaders and said “careful consideration was given to the new ‘province in formation’ in North America.” Their April 16 communiqué endorsed the formation of the new province, saying “we celebrate the organization and official formation of ACNA,” and recognized it as “genuinely Anglican.”
The council said that recognition of the ACNA as a province will first come from the other provinces of the Communion, sidestepping the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC). They recommended that “Anglican provinces affirm full communion with the ACNA,” adding that they looked “forward in real hope to a positive response amongst the churches and diocese and provinces of the Communion.” By going first to the provinces for support, rather than approaching the ACC, the primates suggested a lasting structural and political base of support for the ACNA would be established that will end “cross-border incursions” and restore a “measure of peace” to the church.
The council’s statement comes as a challenge to Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, who has sought to confine debate to the structures of the four “instruments of unity”: the ACC, the Primates Meeting, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lambeth Conference. These instruments were first articulated in 1997 by the Inter-Anglican Doctrinal and Theological Commission’s Virginia Report, but they have not yet gained official status. The ACC declined to endorse the report at its 1999 meeting, and individual provinces are bound by the report’s statements only to the extent that they adopt them within the terms of their constitutions and canons.
The primates’ council also gave a tepid response to the current draft of the proposed Anglican Covenant. While they supported the covenant concept in theory, they noted that the adequacy of the final document “depends on the willingness to address the crisis” dividing the Communion. They restated their commitment to the Communion, however, and to its reform, renewal and “to being a faithful and creative voice within it to recapture focus on mission.”
Muted response to latest ‘Anglican Covenant’ draft: CEN 4.15.09 April 16, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Covenant, Church of England Newspaper.comments closed
| Churches which violate the boundaries of Anglican faith and order would be subject to a disciplinary process overseen by the joint standing committee of the Primates and the Anglican Consultative Council, the third draft of the Anglican Covenant has proposed.
Scofflaws could be adjudged to be acting in a manner “incompatible with the Covenant” and subject to possible suspension from participation in international Anglican forums, the documents said. However, discipline would not be automatic, and would be exercised by the individual provinces and the communion; for “it shall be for each Church and each Instrument to determine its own response to such recommendations” for discipline, the proposed Covenant stated. Meeting from March 29 to April 2 at Ridley Hall, the Covenant Design Group (CDG) revised the second “St Andrew’s” draft of the document. Originally envisioned as setting the parameters of Anglicanism, the third draft of the Covenant was reworked in light of comments received from over 20 provinces, the bishops at the 2008 Lambeth Conference and other comments. Initial reactions to the document have been poor. While applauding the diminution of the earlier draft’s disciplinary provisions, liberals have voiced concern over the centralization of authority in entities outside existing provincial structures. Conservatives have been disappointed with the third draft for weakening the disciplinary provisions, pardoning the current crop of ecclesiastical malefactors, and advocating a tepid Anglicanism divorced from Scripture, the Prayer Book and Church history. The President of the US House of Deputies, Bonnie Anderson, stated the third draft “remains much too structurally focused. Why is there such emphasis on strengthening the ‘Instruments’ and ‘institutions’? ,” she asked. “God calls us together into a more relational and missional way of being the body of Christ. We do not need structures to determine relationships.” One global south archbishop told ReligiousIntelligence.com he was disappointed by draft, saying it was a turgid document written in “late 20th century ecumenese.” Some of its theological suppositions were foreign to the evangelical tradition within Anglicanism, he said, and added that it offered no new way forward for dealing with the crisis in the Communion as it “grandfathered in” the Episcopal Church’s current practices on gay bishops and blessings. |
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Read it all in The Church of England Newspaper’s Religious Intelligence section.
North American Bishops Meeting with GAFCON Primates in London: TLC 4.14.09 April 14, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of North America, GAFCON, Living Church.comments closed
First published in The Living Church.
Eight archbishops are meeting in closed-door session at a London hotel this week to review plans for the creation of a new Anglican Communion province to be known as the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA).
Details of the meeting will be made public at a press conference on April 16, according to a spokesman for the archbishops, but participants told The Living Church the group, which is meeting as the GAFCON (Global Anglican Futures Conference) primates’ council, will discuss the formation and strengthening of the Fellowship of Confession Anglicans (FCA), the formation of the ACNA, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s proposed Anglican Covenant, and the on-going divisions within the Anglican Communion.
Church-backed death row inmate loses appeal for retrial: CEN 4.09.09 p 6. April 13, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Crime, The Episcopal Church.comments closed
One of America’s legal liberal cause célèbre came to a close this week, as the US Supreme Court rejected death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal appeal for a new trial for murdering a Philadelphia police Officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981.
Abu-Jamal, a former member of the militant Black Panther, radio reporter and activist had asked the Supreme Court to toss out his 1982 conviction on the grounds that the prosecuting attorneys had excluded blacks from his jury. On April 6 the Court let his conviction stand, effectively ending his bid for a new trial.
The Abu-Jamal case has excited liberal groups in the US and Europe, including the Episcopal Church, which in 1997 passed a resolution at its General Convention in Philadelphia condemning his conviction as racist.
Resolution D018 submitted by Chicago deputy Newland Smith asked the General Convention to press for a “rehearing” of Abu-Jamal’s case, as his trial was “trial replete with irregularities and biased procedures, so that this champion of the poor and the powerless and an outstanding articulate opponent of death penalty and prison abuse could receive a fair trial.”
The resolution also called upon the Governor of Pennsylvania to commute his sentence and asked the Episcopal Church to “to inform the church people of the racially biased nature of death penalty and the penal system in the U.S.”
After debate and amendments from the House of Bishops, the church adopted the resolution, endorsing the request for a rehearing following a trial that General Convention said was “reported to be replete with irregularities” and backed the call to educate Episcopalians about the “racially biased nature of the judicial and penal systems” in America.
In 1981 Officer Faulkner pulled over an automobile driven by Abu-Jamal’s brother. Prosecutors argued Abu-Jamal witnessed the police stop and shot the policeman, who managed to fire his own weapon, wounding Abu-Jamal. When police arrived on the scene, they found Abu-Jamal in the street, his discharged weapon by his side. A jury convicted Abu-Jamal of capital murder and sentenced him to death.
However Abu-Jamal launched a series of appeals and garnered the support of liberal activists to plead his case for police and prosecutorial misconduct. In March 2008, a federal appellate court upheld Abu-Jamal’s conviction, but tossed out the murder conviction saying the jury had been improperly instructed in the penalty phase of the trial.
A new penalty hearing is to be scheduled and jurors may reinstate the death penalty or sentence Abu-Jamal to life in prison.
Abu-Jamal’s attorney, Robert R. Bryan of San Francisco told the Associated Press his client’s trial was a “mockery of justice” and would seek a rehearing. In a statement released April 6, Philadelphia District Lynne Abraham said it was a “pity” the policeman’s wife “had to go through the last 26 years to hear what she knew from the beginning: that [he] murdered her husband, Police Officer Daniel Faulkner, in cold blood.”
Mr. Smith told The Church of England Newspaper the court’s decision was disappointing, but not a surprise as “institutional racism continues to manifest itself in our country’s judicial and penal systems.”
Zimbabwe bishops called to meeting: CEN 4.09.09 p 8. April 13, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Zimbabwe.comments closed
Ministers from Zimbabwe’s new coalition government have called in the battling bishops of Harare for talks, and have promised an end to police attacks on Anglicans seeking to worship in their churches.
Speaking in Parliament on April 2, newly appointed Home Affairs Co-Minister Giles Mutsekwa, a member of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) stated that he and his ZANU-PF counterpart, Home Affairs Co-Minister Kembo Mohadi, “had a chance to summon” former Bishop Nolbert Kunonga and Bishop Sebastian Bakare to government house for discussions.
The April 1 meeting with the government ministers marks a further decline in Dr. Kunonga’s hold over the diocese’s properties. The breakaway bishop, who was excommunicated in 2007 after he attempted to pull Harare out of the Church of the Province of Central Africa and create an Anglican Church of Zimbabwe, has been able to control the parish properties and assets only through the active interventions of the Mugabe regime.
The Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) has refused to enforce court orders granting Dr. Bakare’s supporters—almost all the diocese’s lay members—use of their churches pending a final adjudication, and through beatings and arrests have kept Dr. Kunonga in control. The statement in Parliament last week, however, marks a further decline in Dr. Kunonga’s fortunes as the coalition government seeks to reinstate the rule of law in Zimbabwe.
“The ministry, indeed Government, is worried there is this disagreement. It has involved the police that we are in charge of and the image of the police has been tarnished,” Mr. Mutsekwa said, according to an account published in the government backed Harare Herald.
The dispute has been referred to the Attorney-General’s Office for review, he said, but noted the police had been instructed to refrain from using force against parishioners.
The government’s statement that police will no longer use violence against Dr. Bakare’s supporters follows last month’s statement by ZRP Commissioner Augustine Chihuri, that he had never ordered his men to disobey the court orders granting both parties use of the buildings, or instructed his men to attack Anglicans.
A long time supporters of President Mugabe, Dr. Kunonga has been banned from travel to the EU or the US due to his complicity in the crimes of the regime. Sources in Harare tell The Church of England Newspaper, Dr. Kunonga’s political connections with Didymus Mutasa, who for the last five years served as the Mugabe regime’s Minister of State for National Security, Lands, Land Reform and Resettlement, and the number two man in ZANU-PF, have kept him in power.
However, when Zimbabwe’s new coalition government was formed in February, Mutasa lost the National Security portfolio and its control of the secret police, when he was named Minister of State for Presidential Affairs. The return of democracy and the rule of law will ultimately see off Dr. Kunonga, predict sources in Zimbabwe, but the Mugabe regime and ZANU-PF still are clinging to power and it remains to be seen if the coalition government will survive.
Election set for new Bishop of Harare: CEN 4.09.09 p 8. April 13, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Zimbabwe.comments closed
The Diocese of Harare has set April 25 as the date of the election for a successor to its interim bishop Dr. Sebastian Bakare. Three of the four candidates come from outside the country, driven from Zimbabwe by its former bishop Dr. Nolbert Kunonga.
The Archdeacon of Northern Botswana, Dr. Archford Musodza; the priest-in-charge of St Alban’s Church in Tattenhall, Cheshire, Fr. Lameck Mutate; the Africa Desk Officer for the USPG, Canon Chad Gandiya; and the rector of Mbare parish, Harare, Canon David Manyau have been nominated to stand for election.
In 2001 Dr. Nolbert Kunonga was elected Bishop of Harare, in an election, critic’s charged, engineered by the CIO—Zimbabwe’s secret police. During his tumultuous tenure, Dr. Kunonga was accused of soliciting the murder of clergy and lay opponents within the diocese, and tied himself closely to the regime of strongman Robert Mugabe. An ecclesiastical trial for his alleged crimes collapsed after witnesses declined to return to Zimbabwe in fear of their safety.
The Church of the Province of Central Africa excommunicated Dr. Kunonga after he attempted to pull the diocese out of the province, and on Nov 7, 2007 appointed the retired Bishop of Manicaland, Dr. Sebastian Bakare to serve as interim bishop.
The slate of four candidates includes the former Dean of Bishop Gaul Theological College in Harare, Dr. Archford Musodza, who also served as a Lecturer at the College of the Transfiguration in South Africa. Driven from the diocese by Dr. Kunonga, the government backed Harare Herald last year denounced Dr. Musodza, saying he was a tool of foreign interests that sought to bring down the regime.
The former Archdeacon of Harare East and vicar of St Paul’s in Highfield, Harare, Fr. Mutate also ran afoul of Dr. Kunonga and the regime, and was granted asylum in the UK in 2005 where he serves as a vicar in the Diocese of Chester.
A former Dean of Bishop Gaul Theological College, Canon Gandiya oversees the USPG’s Africa operations, and last month was appointed by Dr. Rowan Williams to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Pastoral Visitor team.
A seminary classmate of former bishop Nolbert Kunonga, Canon Manyau worked with the bishop until Dr. Kunonga’s break with the Province of Central Africa. A canon of the Cathedral of St. Mary and All Saints in Harare, he serves as rector of Mbare within the diocese.
Bishops in the Province of Central Africa are elected by a 21 member elective assembly. Twelve of the members: six clergy and six lay, are drawn from the diocese, and nine from the province: three bishops, three clergy, and three lay members. A two-thirds majority is required to elect a bishop. If the assembly is unable to elect a bishop, it may delegate the appointment to the Episcopal Synod or to the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Trinidad Archdeacon offers hangman services: CEN 4.09.09 p 8. April 11, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Church of the Province of the West Indies, Crime.comments closed
The West Indies spiraling crime rate has prompted a Trinidad archdeacon to offer his services as a hangman.
In his sermon to the congregation of St. Stephen’s Anglican Church in Princes Town on Palm Sunday, the Ven. Edward Primus stated the murder last week of a woman and her two children was evidence of the moral collapse of society.
“Two children and their mother chopped to death. Hang him high! If they do not want to do it, I will! You have to fight fire with fire sometimes. My heart is bleeding. How many more must die before we act,” Archdeacon Primus told the congregation, according to Newsday.
Narcotics trafficking and gang violence has rising dramatically in the West Indies in the recent decade, and in 2008 Trinidad surpassed Jamaica as the region’s murder capital. Trinidad recorded 550 murders in 2008. In January the Home Office reported there were 772 murders in England and Wales committed in 2008.
Breaking the flow of narcotics north to America and weapons south to the Caribbean and Latin America will be one of the principal topics of discussion at the Fifth Summit of the Americas scheduled for April 17-19 in Port of Spain. US President Barack Obama will be asked by Caribbean leaders to stop the flow of small arms from the US into the region, which authorities believe has led to a tripling of the homicide rate over the past decade.
Individual states within the region have responded to the crime wave with a push towards harsher deterrence of crime. On Dec 19 the small island nation of St. Kitts and Nevis hanged Charles Laplance for the 2006 murder of his wife—the first execution in the West Indies since the execution of murderer David Mitchell in the Bahamas in 2000.
Since Mitchell’s hanging, there has been a de facto ban on capital punishment in the English-speaking Caribbean since a 2000 ruling by the Privy Council handed down after Mitchell’s execution. The Privy Council lengthened the appeals process for those convicted of capital crimes to approximately five years. The five year process effectively ended executions, as a separate law banned excessively long imprisonments for prisoners on death row.
Laplance was executed in St Kitts after his attorney failed to file a timely appeal of his sentence. In 2008 the murder rate in St. Kitts reached a level of 52 per100,000, making it one of the most deadliest countries in the world. The murder rate in the US was almost ten times less at 5.9 per 100,000 according to statistics released by the FBI while the rate in Britain was 1.37 per 100,000.
St. Kitts and Nevis prime minister Denzil Douglas told the Caribbean media the execution was necessary to establish a deterrent among the people for taking another’s life and that the government has “a resolve to deal with the issue of crime and violence in this country.” In November, the Jamaican parliament rejected a ban on capital punishment, with the Trinidad parliament following suit in February.
The region’s Anglican bishops, however, last year called for an end to capital punishment. In a pastoral letter released after the Nov 11-14 meeting, the bishops said it was understandable “the cry ‘to hang the perpetrators high’ [had] reached crescendo proportions,” adding that violent crime had “produced fear and a sense of impotence and hopelessness in our communities.”
However, “mindful of our Blessed Lord’s repudiation of ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,’ and, that in our prayer, study, reflection and experience, the death penalty has not been proved to be a deterrent, we, the bishops of the Church in the Province of the West Indies, meeting in Nassau in AD 2008, are of one mind in calling our people to stand with us in our opposition to the death penalty.”
More power goes to Cyril: CEN 4.09.09 p 6. April 11, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Russian Orthodox.comments closed
The Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church has restructured the church’s administration, centralizing power into the hands of the church’s new patriarch, Cyril.
At the close of its March 31 meeting, the first synod for Cyril as patriarch since his election earlier this year, the Department for External Relations (DECR) was dramatically downsized, with many of its former powers transferred to new agencies. Under the former patriarch, Alexy II, Cyril served as head of the DECR, and by virtue of that office was the second most powerful man in the church.
The breakup of the church’s foreign ministry moves many of Cyril’s former powers at the DECR into the office of the patriarch. Oversight of the church relations with dioceses, monasteries and other internal ecclesial entities was passed from the DECR directly to the Patriarch’s office.
Communiqué 18 from the Holy Synod also created the Department for Relations between the Church and Society, charged with representing the church in its relations with the “organisms of legislative power, with the political parties, with the labor unions, cultural organizations, and the other institutions of civil society” in Russia and the former republics of the Soviet Union. The new department will be run by Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, Cyril’s former number two and close aide at the DECR.
The Synod also created a Special Secretariat for Foreign Affairs headed up by a second aide of Cyril’s at the DECR, Bishop Egorevsky, tasked with direct relations with overseas churches.
Archbishop Hilarion of Vienna, the former representative of the Moscow Patriarchate to European institutions, was appointed director of the downsized DECR, which will now be responsible only for the “oversight of institutes that conduct ecclesiastical diplomacy,” the minutes of the synod stated.
Kosovo independence opposed: CEN 4.09.09 p 8. April 11, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Kosovo, Russian Orthodox, Serbian Orthodox.comments closed
Patriarch Cyril of Moscow and All Russia has denounced NATO on the tenth anniversary of the Kosovo War and pledged its support to the Serbian Orthodox Church and government in its bid to regain Kosovo.
In a letter addressed to Patriarch Paul of Belgrade published on the Moscow Patriarchate’s website on March 24, Cyril stated “the Russian Church will endeavor to raise its voice and protect God’s truth, protect our Orthodox brothers and sisters living in the Kosovo district of Serbia and exiled from it, protect all victims of violence and flouting of justice.”
The expulsion of Kosovo’s Serb population following the war, has led to the wholesale destruction of Serbian religious and cultural sites by Kosovo’s Albanian majority, Serbia has claimed. The Russian Patriarch condemned the destruction of Orthodox churches, monasteries and religious sites saying the “the hands of impious” Albanians had fallen “with impunity” against the “sacred things in the heart of Serbian orthodoxy.”
The Russian government has also opposed Kosovo’s independence from Serbia, and has strongly opposed NATO’s attempts to resolve the conflict by backing the Kosovar independence.
NATO’s intervention on the side of the Kosovar Albanians was unjust, Cyril said.
“Several countries, being sure they have the right to determine world’s fate, united to impose their will on a nation,” he said. The Russian Orthodox Church “has more than once spoke up to support our Sister-Church regarding the ways of settling the current crisis,” and would continue its campaign against Kosovar independence.
“Your sorrows are the pain of the entire Orthodox Church,” Cyril told Patriarch Paul.
Postponement for Canadian bishop post: CEN 4.10.09 April 10, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Canada, Church of England Newspaper.comments closed
| The bishops of Canada’s ecclesiastical province of British Columbia and the Yukon have postponed the election of a bishop for the Anglican Parishes of the Central Interior (APCI), stating the APCI’s ecclesiastical foundations needed to be firmly defined before they would take action.
Following a meeting of the province’s bishops on March 27, Archbishop Terry Buckle, the metropolitan of the province and Bishop of the Yukon released a statement saying the bishops’ decision not to take action was unanimous. Read it all in The Church of England Newspaper. |
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Latest Covenant Draft Vests Adoption and Discipline with Provinces: TLC 4.08.09 April 8, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Covenant, Living Church.comments closed
First published in The Living Church magazine
Provinces, not individual dioceses which violate the terms of a proposed Anglican Covenant, will be subject to a disciplinary process overseen by the Joint Standing Committee of the Primates and the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC), according to the third draft of the document released on April 8. The document is to be discussed next month during the ACC meeting in Jamaica.
Meeting from March 29 to April 2 at Ridley Hall, a theological college in Cambridge, England, the Covenant Design Group revised the second “St Andrew’s” draft of the document. The group spent time reworking the document in light of reactions received from more than 20 Anglican provinces, the bishops attending the 2008 Lambeth Conference, and other comments.
Those adopting the covenant should agree to “participate in mediated conversations” when disputes arise, and commit to “see such processes through.” If unwilling to abide by the covenant’s terms and judged to be acting in a manner “incompatible with the covenant,” a disciplinary process overseen by the joint standing committee of the primates and ACC may be introduced. Repercussions include the potential for suspension from participation in global church councils. However, “it shall be for each church and each instrument to determine its own response to such recommendations” for discipline, the proposed covenant stated.
Divided into four sections, the document restates traditional creedal beliefs from a high-church perspective, but seeks to mollify both the liberal and conservative wings of the Anglican Communion. Churches are to “teach and act in continuity and consonance with scripture and the catholic and apostolic faith, order and tradition, as received by the churches of the Anglican Communion.”
However, the churches are to “encourage and be open to prophetic and faithful leadership in ministry and mission” while studying the “scriptures in our different contexts,” with the aim of maintaining “the solemn obligation to nurture and sustain eucharistic communion.”
The document reaffirms the constitutional and canonical autonomy of individual provinces of the Anglican Communion and acknowledges that within the “life of communion” there is “an ongoing engagement with the diverse expressions of apostolic authority, from synods and episcopal councils to local witness, in a way which continually interprets and articulates the common faith of the church’s members.”
By giving provinces the ultimate authority in determining the meaning of the covenant, the document effectively concedes that the national churches, not dioceses, are the primary ecclesial units of the Anglican Communion.
Adoption of the covenant is also vested with provinces, not individual dioceses: “Every church of the Anglican Communion, as recognized in accordance with the constitution of the Anglican Consultative Council, is invited to adopt this covenant in its life according to its own constitutional procedures.”
Matters of doctrinal and moral innovation should be “tested by shared discernment,” by seeking the “shared mind with other churches, through the Communion’s councils, about matters of common concern, in a way consistent with the scriptures, the common standards of faith, and the canon laws of our churches.”
Anglican leaders meet to chart future path: CEN 4.09.09 p 5. April 8, 2009
Posted by geoconger in ACC 14, Church of England Newspaper.comments closed
First published in The Church of England Newspaper
An Anglican Covenant, finances and the political divisions within the Communion and across the world will be among topics of debate at next month’s meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council.
Seventy-five Archbishops, bishops, clergy and lay delegates from the Anglican Communion’s 38 provinces are scheduled to attend the May 1-13 meeting at the Pegasus Hotel in Kingston, Jamaica. Over the course of the eleven day meeting, the delegates will receive reports from a variety of pan-Anglican groups and networks, endorse a new budget and elect officers, receive a presentation on the work of the Windsor Continuation Group, and review the proposed Anglican Covenant.
Public worship services with Jamaican Anglicans will be held on May 3 at an opening worship service at the National Arena in Kingston and on May 12 at the Cathedral of St. Jago de la Vega, Spanish Town, on May 12. However, the highlight of the meeting would be “consideration of a Covenant for the Provinces of the Anglican Communion,” a press statement from the ACC said on April 3.
The delegates will attend an “information plenary” on the Covenant on the morning of May 4, followed by small group discussion. On Friday May 8 the delegates will hold a “decision making plenary” and will be asked to endorse or reject the Covenant, but will not be empowered to amend the final document. The ACC could also return the Covenant with suggested revisions to the Design Group tasked by the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams with drafting the document.
Presentations will also be made to the delegates on the state of Ecumenical relations with various churches, the “Listening Process,” Liturgy, Mission, and Theological Education from commissions and staffers of the ACC.
Reports from the official Networks of the Anglican Communion will also be given to the meeting. The Anglican Communion Environmental Network (ACEN), Anglican Peace and Justice Network (APJN), Anglican Urban Network (AUN), Colleges and Universities of the Anglican Communion (CUAC), the International Anglican Family Network (IAFN), the International Anglican Women’s Network (IAWN), the International Anglican Youth Network (IAYN), and the Network for Interfaith Concerns (NIFCON) will review their work of the past three years.
Resolutions arising from the reports also will be offered for consideration by the ACC. However, it is likely the ACC will “receive” rather than “endorse” or “affirm” the reports, as some of the document contain contentious and materials of uneven quality, critics note.
A report by Canon Naim Ateek of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Center in Jerusalem published in the AJPN’s report denounces Israeli “state violence and terrorism” and calls the creation of Israel a “catastrophe.” Similar sentiments expressed in a report by the AJPN to ACC-13 in Nottingham in 2005 caused considerable friction with Jewish leaders and public controversy.
Rising personnel expenses and declining revenues from the provinces and charitable giving will also be under review. Delegates will be asked to approve a £1.435 million pound budget for fiscal 2009, funded by £1.212 million in contributions from the Communion’s member provinces. Seven provinces declined to contribute to the 2008 budget: Congo, Kenya, Nigeria, Sudan, Uganda, West Africa and Pakistan, and are not expected to contribute to the 2009 budget.
The Church of England remains the largest contributor to the ACC, providing £417,000 or 34 percent of the 2009 budget, followed by the Episcopal Church with £348,400 or 29 percent and Australia at £98,300 or 8 percent of the budget.
The Compass Rose Society is set to contribute £150,000 to the 2009 budget in line with prior years. However, interim financial statements seen by The Church of England Newspaper dated Nov 25, 2008 report the Society’s contributions for the year totaled only £80,306.
Asked by CEN what it had contributed to the ACC in 2008, a spokesman for Compass Rose Society President Bishop Phillip Poole of Toronto said it could not answer that question. While the “amount of our funding [was ] public information,” determining what was actually contributed was “more difficult than it might first appear,” the spokesman said.
Nigerian Primate urges Anglicans to unite against militants: CEN 4.09.09 p 5. April 8, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Church of Nigeria, Islam.comments closed
First published in The Church of England Newspaper.
The Primate of Nigeria, Archbishop Peter Akinola has entered the dispute surrounding critical comments made on an Evangelical website of the work and ministry of the Barnabas Fund, urging Evangelicals in Britain to put aside their divisions over how best to confront the challenge of militant Islam, and stand together in the face of its advance.
Citing incidents of Muslim persecution of converts from Islam to Christianity in Britain and the death threats received by the Bishop of Rochester, Archbishop Akinola wrote last week that “no longer are the painful experiences of Christians who are suffering at the hands of Islam confined to Africa, Asia and the Middle East, they are increasing and alarmingly occurring in the West.”
Many in the West were blind to the real character of militant Islam, he said. While most took for granted the right of an individual to change his religion, under Sharia law “adult male apostates suffer the death penalty and there are many cases where zealous Islamic leaders take the law into their own hands and carry out execution of apostates.”
Uncertain as to how best precede, Western political and church leaders had effectively capitulated to Islam “in an effort to establish man-made peace and cohesion in society,” he said, citing Dr. Rowan Williams’ defence of his comments on Sharia law in a press conference at the close of the February primates meeting.
Nigerian Christians understood the challenge of Sharia law, where 12 of the country’s 36 states had incorporated its provisions in the civil law code. “In the last 22 years the country has witnessed over 20 religious crises resulting in worshippers being prevented from attending church services, Christian properties and churches have been burnt and destroyed and not a few Christians have been maimed and killed,” he said.
Faced with this challenge, Archbishop Akinola castigated evangelicals in Britain for attacking each other “across the Internet on blogs and websites.” While not mentioning by name the controversy surrounding negative comments about Dr. Patrick Sookhdeo of the Barnabas Fund, Archbishop Akinola urged a halt to the “totally unnecessary battle of words” that had left some individuals “wounded and hurt, [while] others have felt misunderstood and maligned.”
“Such behaviour only strengthens the hand of the opponent,” he said noting that “those faithful to the historic Christian faith are already fighting many battles on many fronts.”
“I appeal to you, brethren, in the name of our only Lord and Saviour Jesus the Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought,” he said. “Rather than investing your God-given money, time and energy into unprofitable arguments, paying for publicity for point scoring, leaders of the Christian Church must commit every possible and available resource to faithful proclamation of the gospel message, which has once for all been entrusted to the saints.”
Fight to reclaim churches in Harare: CEN 4.03.09 p 8. April 8, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Zimbabwe.comments closed
Gun fire erupted at a Harare parish last Sunday, with police firing upon parishioners seeking to reclaim their churches from the former Bishop of Harare, Dr. Nolbert Kunonga.
According to the official government daily, The Harare Herald, confrontations between Anglicans loyal to the Bishop of Harare and a small faction loyal to Dr. Kunonga, but backed by the police, took place at eight suburban congregations. In Glen Norah, a township southwest of the city, police fired upon protesters and arrested seven, including two priests and the church warden.
The Herald said the police responded with violence only after having been attacked. Inspector James Sabau told the Herald the police were engaged in their duties, “patrolling different places to maintain law and order as usual targeting mostly the crime prone zones [when] some parishioners turned hostile towards them.”
At St Francis Church in Glen Norah, “some members of the church started throwing stones at the officers leading to the arrest of seven parishioners who were charged and paid deposit fines for criminal nuances. Police only used teargas when the rivals turned violent,” he said.
Last month Dr. Kunonga’s grip on the church in Harare began to slip, when Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) Commissioner Augustine Chihuri publicly withdrew his support for the controversial bishop. Commissioner Chihuri signed an affidavit, stating he had never ordered the ZRP to defy a court order calling for Dr. Kunonga’s faction and the majority group loyal to Bishop Sebastian Bakare to share church properties.
Since 2007, the ZRP have locked out supporters of Bishop Bakare—estimated to be approximately 95 percent of the diocese—from parish churches, and have used violence to keep Dr. Kunonga in power.
However, following the publication of the Chihuri letter, Bishop Bakare asked Anglicans to return to their churches. On the first Sunday for Anglicans back in their churches for over a year, police interrupted a service led by Bishop Bakare at a parish in Mabvuku on March 15, demanding he withdraw. Bishop Bakare declined, and the police pulled back and let him continue the service.
The return of Anglicans to their churches has so far seen mixed results, with some police units backing Dr. Kunonga, while others have stood down—-a state of affairs that matches the ambiguous political atmosphere within Zimbabwe today, analysts note.
According to an interview given to independent journalist John Fernandes by the rector of Glen Norah, the Rev. Vincent Fenga, the congregation decided that “since our colleagues elsewhere had gone back, we should also do the same and start to use the church.”
However, “the police were not having any of that so problems erupted as church members started to tussle with the police,” Fr. Fenga said.
The ZRP’s attempts to clear the area with force were met with a shower of stones. The ZRP retaliated with teargas and gunfire, wounding one man and arresting seven, including Fr. Fenga and his curate.
After the arrest, members of the parish’s Mother’s Union marched to the police station where Fr. Fenga was held and spent the day singing hymns outside the building in protest to the arrest, Fernandes reported.
The ZRP’s continued support for Dr. Kunonga in defiance of a court order and last month’s statement by Commissioner Chijuri, has prompted a lawsuit by the Church of the Province of Central Africa calling for the law to be enforced.
Diocesan Registrar Michael Chingore told the Standard the church had “launched a contempt of court appeal against the police at the High Court,” he said. “The police have only been trying to stop our services instead of maintaining order.”
TEC school employs abortion activist: CEN 4.03.09 p 8. April 8, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Abortion/Euthanasia/Biotechnology, Church of England Newspaper, The Episcopal Church.comments closed
A pro-abortion activist has been named the dean of Episcopal Divinity School (EDS) in Massachusetts. On March 30 the school’s board of trustees announced that the Rev. Katharine Ragsdale would assume the post of president and dean on July 1.
Since 1996 Dr. Ragsdale has served as vicar of St David’s Episcopal Church in Pepperell, Mass, and for the past four years has served as executive director of the Political Research Associates, a leftist think tank whose mission is to build a more just and inclusive world by exposing programs from the Christian Right “that undermine human rights.”
An openly gay priest, Dr. Ragsdale is best known however for her championing of abortion rights, serving for 17 years on the board of the Religions Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC)—a political lobbying group that campaigns for an unfettered access to abortion. During her eight year tenure as chairwoman of the RCRC, Dr. Ragsdale doubled the size of the organization’s budget and staff.
In a 2007 sermon posted on her website, Dr. Ragsdale stated she believed “abortion was a blessing” and abortionists were “engaged in holy work.” Abortion for reasons of health, finance and convenience were moral choices, she argued.
“When a woman becomes pregnant within a loving, supportive, respectful relationship; has every option open to her; decides she does not wish to bear a child; and has access to a safe, affordable abortion – there is not a tragedy in sight — only blessing. The ability to enjoy God’s good gift of sexuality without compromising one’s education, life’s work, or ability to put to use God’s gifts and call is simply blessing,” she said.
Dr. Ragsdale closed her sermon with the statement “These are the two things I want you, please, to remember – abortion is a blessing and our work is not done. Let me hear you say it: abortion is a blessing and our work is not done.”
The Episcopal Church holds contradictory positions on abortion. In January 2006 the Episcopal Church’s Executive Council approved the Episcopal Church’s membership in the RCRC. At the 2006 General Convention the Diocese of Tennessee introduced a resolution seeking to rescind the church’s membership. However the resolution was withdrawn before a vote was taken.
While the RCRC works for abortion rights in any and all circumstances, the Episcopal Church historically taught that moral discernment, on matters related to abortion, was essential, with the church’s formal position stated by the 1994 General Convention stated “We emphatically oppose abortion as a means of birth control, family planning, sex selection, or any reason of mere convenience.”
Since the 2006 affiliation with the RCRC a number of dioceses have individually disassociated themselves from the Executive Council’s decision to join the political lobbying group.
Considered the most liberal of the Episcopal Church’s theological college, EDS was founded in 1974 following the merger of the Philadelphia Divinity School and Episcopal Theological Seminary, and in recent years has faced mounting financial deficits. Leaders at the seminary have welcomed Dr. Ragsdale’s fundraising and professional experience.
The acting dean of EDS, Angela Bauer-Levesque, welcomed the selection of Dr. Ragsdale. “Her commitments, energy and clarity, combined with her astute analysis, her collaborative style, and her experience in fund raising will make EDS more boldly live out its purpose of educating lay and ordained leaders for the church and the world, dedicated to work for justice, foster diversity and seek constructive change,” she said.
Vermont to legalize gay marriage: CEN 4.03.09 p 8. April 8, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Human Sexuality --- The gay issue.comments closed
Vermont may become the first US state to legalize “gay marriage” through the legislative process. While Massachusetts, Connecticut and California enacted laws to permit gay marriage, they were mandated by the state courts.
Nine years ago the state became the first in the nation to permit gay civil unions—which carry the same rights and responsibilities as marriage, but without the name. Gay activists have argued that withholding the name “marriage” from a gay union was discriminatory and have sought to amend state law.
The proposed bill would change the definition of marriage in state law from the “legally recognized union of one man and one woman” to the “legally recognize union of two people.” A final vote could take place as early as April 3.
On March 31 a legislative committee passed the bill by an 8-2 vote, with seven Democrats joining one Republican in supporting it, and two Republicans opposing it. The full legislature is expected to pass the bill, but Republican Governor Jim Douglas has promised to veto it. A two thirds majority of both houses of the legislature would then be needed to then pass it into law.
The state’s churches have been divided on the issue, with the Episcopal Church arguing in support of the gay marriage bill and the Roman Catholic and evangelical groups opposed.
At a hearing before the state senate on March 18, a statement was read on behalf of the Episcopal Bishop of Vermont. The Rt. Rev. Thomas Ely said his views “represent the sentiments of the vast majority of Episcopalians in Vermont,” but added that his diocese was “not of one mind on the various issues concerning human sexuality that are currently part of our civil and religious discourse.”
However, “as a person of faith, my religious beliefs, grounded in the Bible and the Baptismal Covenant, have led me to speak out for human and civil rights in a broad range of areas over the years,” he said.
The Episcopal Church had “consistently expressed its conviction that homosexual persons are entitled to equal protection of the laws with all other citizen.” The bishop believed that gay marriage was “consistent” with that call for justice.
Drawing upon natural law, Christian theology and ethical teaching, Roman Catholic Bishop Salvatore Matano urged the legislature to reject the bill. “The union of husband and wife is a distinct vocation and using the law to alter or to redefine marriage is an injustice to those who have embraced this state in life and negates the long history of benefit and the justified acknowledgment that it has received from the very beginning of history.”
He added that there was “also the very real fear that if our government here in Vermont adopts the opposite view – that our historic marriage tradition is just bigotry and discrimination – this will in the end have very far reaching and perhaps legal consequences that will fall disproportionately on those Vermont citizens and faith communities who try to sustain and transmit the very marriage ideal that this law is attempting to supplant. When our own civil government wrongly and unjustly decides that our views of marriage are discriminatory, bigoted, rooted in hatred, we can expect severe consequences.”
Australian bishop investigated for sexual allegation failure: CEN 4.03.09 p 7. April 6, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Abuse, Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper.comments closed
Complaints of conduct unbecoming a member of the clergy have lead to the convening of an Episcopal Standards Commission in Australia to investigate the Bishop of The Murray, the Rt. Rev. Ross Davies.
On March 17, the Archbishop of Adelaide, Dr. Jeffrey Drive released a statement on his diocesan website saying that he could “confirm” that “an investigation is underway”
“I have been asked by the Diocesan Council of the Diocese of The Murray to consider ways to assist in resolving issues raised in that Diocese related to the Bishop. A preliminary investigation will take place in the first instance to enable me and those advising me to understand the issues and determine how best to proceed.”
“It is important that this be a thorough, timely and appropriate process and at some arms length both to me and the Diocese of The Murray,” Dr. Driver said, noting the church’s disciplinary canons forbad discussion of the charges or the progress of the investigation.
On Sept 22, Bishop Davies returned to work after a year’s sick leave taken in the wake of charges that he failed to appropriately respond to allegations that his archdeacon had engaged in sexual misconduct.
An internal church report in 2005 found that the allegations against Archdeacon Peter Coote were “credible”, however, Bishop Davies is alleged to have taken no action other than refer him to a therapist.
A review found insufficient evidence to bring the bishop before a tribunal, however, on Nov 30, the Adelaide Sunday Mail reported that Bishop Davies was asking for approximately £500,000 from the diocese in return for his early retirement.
The Special Tribunal Canon passed at the 2007 General Synod enumerates crimes for which a bishop may be investigated. Breaches of faith, ritual or ceremony, drunkenness, failure to honour lawful debts, unchastity, violation of the constitution, canons and ordinances of the Anglican Church of Australia and violation of a bishop’s consecrations vows are grounds for review.
A letter writing campaign mounted by a lay group opposed to the bishop has urged supports to address complaints to the Episcopal Standards Commission—the body charged with investigating allegations of misconduct—-raising the additional catch-all category of conduct unbecoming a member of the clergy: “conduct, whenever occurring, which would be disgraceful if committed by a member of the clergy, and which at the present time is productive, or if known publicly would be productive, of scandal or evil report.”
Should the Episcopal Standards Commission find the allegations credible, Bishop Davies would be brought before the Special Tribunal for bishops to answer the charges, and if found guilty could be dismissed from office.
South Africa denies visa to Dalai Lama: CEN 4.03.09 p 7. April 6, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Southern Africa, Church of England Newspaper, Politics.comments closed
The Archbishop of Cape Town and South African religious leaders have denounced their country’s government for buckling to Chinese diplomatic pressure and denying a visa to the Dalai Lama.
By pandering to “Beijing’s political demands” and forbidding the Dalai Lama to enter the country, the South African government had “weakened our national sovereignty,” Archbishop Thabo Makgoba wrote in his capacity as chairman of the Western Cape Religious Leaders Forum in an open letter to the government on March 25.
While China was a valuable economic partner for South Africa, “we nonetheless are convinced it is inappropriate for any foreign power to ask us to sacrifice our values and our constitutional principles in exchange for their support,” the religious leaders’ letter said.
Organizers of the 2010 FIFA World Cup in Johannesburg had organized a peace conference for March 27, inviting the Dalai Lama and other Nobel Peace Prize laureates to discuss how sport may help combat racism and xenophobia.
However, the South African government refused to issue a visa to the Dalai Lama, saying it wanted the conference to focus on sport and not on Tibet. On March 24 the chairman of the World Cup organizing committee, Irvin Khoza, announced the conference had been postponed indefinitely “to ensure it is held under conducive conditions.”
One of the conference’s invited speakers, former Cape Town Archbishop Desmond Tutu, denounced the government’s decision as “disgraceful,” telling the South African press “We are shamelessly succumbing to Chinese pressure. I feel deeply distressed and ashamed.”
In an interview with the Weekend Argus, Archbishop Tutu read portions of a letter he had received from the Tibetan spiritual leader. The decision to deny him a visa, the Dalai Lama wrote, was “another manifestation of one of the fundamental challenges to world peace as a whole: namely, a lack of understanding and mutual respect”.
“I believe religious, social and political leaders throughout the world have a responsibility to ensure principles triumph over the obsession with money and power,” the Dalai Lama-the exiled spiritual and political leader of Tibet—stated.
The religious leaders’ letter said “this decision has provided a stark reminder of the need to separate the functions of the ruling political party from those of Government and Head of State.”
It also questioned the government’s moral leadership, reminding the ruling ANC party that the country’s constitution and the African Charter “guarantee to all peoples the right of self-determination. “
“When considering China’s relations with its minorities, national groupings and neighbours, while we are bound to respect both China’s sovereignty, we should nonetheless refuse to compromise, or be seen to compromise, our own African values, including self-determination and the full spectrum of internationally normative human rights,” the statement said.
The religious leaders concluded their letter by stating “we believe South Africa has erred in its judgement.” However the decision to postpone the conference now allowed “time for [South African President Kgalema Motlanthe] to speak out in unequivocal support of our hard won values of freedom, inclusion and fundamental human and religious rights.”
Bishops plead with Tamil Tigers to let aid through: CEN 4.03.09 p 7. April 6, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Church of Ceylon, Church of England Newspaper.comments closed
Ceylon’s Anglican and Catholic Bishops have released an open letter to the government and the rebel Tamil Tigers pleading for them to permit aid to reach the estimated 250,000 civilians displaced in the fighting in the Vanni region of Northern Sri Lanka.
The bishops urged the two sides to act now. “This is a very critical humanitarian crisis faced by fellow Sri Lankans. The needs of food, water, health, sanitation, shelter and, above all, physical security of these our sisters and brothers and children need to be addressed without delay.”
Last month the World Food Program (WFP) warned that the government’s military campaign to end the thirty year old civil war had left civilians “facing a terrible situation with many deaths, injuries and lack of food, shelter, safety and medicine.”
Food assistance and relief work to the region was halted by the government at the start of its ground offensive in September. While the fighting had left the government in control of the region, the Red Cross reported that civilians, “most of whom have been displaced,” were no “completely dependent” on humanitarian support.
The March 25 appeal was endorsed by the Anglican Bishops Duleep de Chickera of Colombo and Kumara Illangasinghe of Kurunagala, and Roman Catholic Bishops Thomas Savundranayagam of Jaffna, Rayappu Joseph of Mannar, and Norbert Andradi of Anuradhapura.
The bishops stated the “plight of these trapped civilians has become absolutely desperate,” and urged “all sides” to “recognize the helplessness and powerlessness of these desperate Sri Lankans.”
The bishops commended the government for creating a “seven mile long strip” along the coast as a “no-fire zone” and would allow civilians to flee, but urged both sides to avoid using artillery and in “areas where civilians reside.”
All sides should have the “humility and the courage” to agree to allow aid through the WFP to reach civilians, and to allow the Red Cross to transport the sick and wounded of the battlefield and to allow humanitarian organizations to oversee the evacuation of civilians, the bishops said.
Quincy Dioceses files lawsuit against Episcopal Church: CEN 4.03.09 p 6. April 4, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Property Litigation, Quincy.comments closed
The breakaway Diocese of Quincy has filed suit against the Episcopal Church in an Illinois Court, asking the court to clarify its rights to the name and assets of the diocese.
“We hoped from the beginning to avoid any legal action,” the President of Quincy’s Standing Committee, Fr. John Spencer said on March 31. However, preliminary moves by the national church to seize the diocese’s bank accounts prompted the court filing, he said.
Attorneys for the national church in January wrote to the bank that manages the diocese’s endowment funds, stating that the breakaway diocese no longer had a claim on the funds and that its officers should not be permitted to disperse the funds. Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori wrote the members of the Standing Committee in February informing them that she no longer “recognized” them as officers of the diocese.
However, under the church’s canons, “she has no authority to make such a judgment,” Fr Spencer said. “The governing officers of each diocese have always been elected at the local level, and the General Convention officers in New York have no say in the matter,” he argued.
Publication of the Episcopal Church’s national legal strategy in March that would “craft a lawsuit that is trim and focused on the critical claims involving ownership and possession of diocesan property” in the breakaway dioceses prompted Quincy’s decision to seek protection from the courts.
“It was clear,” Fr. Spencer said, “that a law suit was heading our way. From suits they have filed elsewhere, we know Episcopal Church leaders will start by trying to seize our funds, and eventually try to take our churches.”
At its November 2008 synod, Quincy joined Pittsburgh, Fort Worth and San Joaquin in quitting the Episcopal Church and affiliating with the Province of the Southern Cone, and is expected to be one of the founding dioceses of the third province Anglican Church in North America at its June convocation in Bedford, Texas. The diocese is currently without a bishop, as the Rt. Rev. Keith Ackerman stepped down from office last year.
Quincy is asking the Illinois courts for a “declaratory judgment,” that lays out the rights, duties and obligations of the diocese under law—a process that may take several years, should the parties appeal unfavorable decisions. The Quincy case raised to 57 the number of property lawsuits between dioceses, parishes and the national church that have appeared before US state courts.
Episcopal Church in crisis: CEN 4.03.09 p 6. April 4, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, The Episcopal Church.comments closed
An internal committee of the Episcopal Church’s General Convention has released a report warning that the church is in crisis and faced with long term decline.
The 20-page report from the Committee on the State of the Church published in the “Blue Book”-the report prepared for the July 8-17 General Convention in Anaheim, California—found a church wracked with conflict, and one whose aging members were dying off and not being replaced
The findings of the committee, appointed by Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and President of the House of Deputies Bonnie Anderson, contradict the two leaders’ assurances that all was well. Speaking to the Columbus Dispatch last October following the secession of the dioceses of San Joaquin and Pittsburgh, Bishop Jefferts Schori said, “I think we’re well past the worst of the crisis.”
The report acknowledged past criticism the Committee seemed “unwilling to recognize the presence of a major source of internal controversy” within the Episcopal Church. “The metaphor most often used was that we ‘failed to acknowledge the elephant in the room’, referring to what many viewed as the momentous decision by the 74th General Convention to consent to the consecration of the Bishop of New Hampshire.”
In the years following the consecration of Gene Robinson “tensions” appeared to have risen dramatically within congregations. A 2005 survey found that 37 percent of congregations were in some degree of conflict and had lost members as a result of the Robinson consecration.
A 2008 survey found that 64 percent of congregations were now in some degree of conflict. “Overall, 47 percent of Episcopal congregations had serious conflict over this issue, 40 percent indicated that some people left and 18 percent indicated that some people withheld funds,” the committee report states.
Those congregations in conflict had also lost the most members, with the “the rate of decline in Average Sunday Attendance from 2003-2007 among congregations with serious conflict over the ordination of gay clergy was 35 percent higher than congregations with no conflict over the issue.”
The church’s finances were also trending downwards. While income growth had kept pace with inflation over the past seven years, the number of congregations reporting financial difficulties was “alarming.” A “very substantial fraction of our congregations-two-thirds-reported that in 2008 they experienced some level of financial difficulty. Eight percent report ‘serious’ difficulty, 17 percent report ‘some’ difficulty, and another 42 percent describe their financial circumstances as ‘tight, but we manage’.”
Claims by the church’s progressive wing that new members would swarm into the church in the wake of the Robinson consecration had not been borne out. The report noted that The Episcopal Church has an average 19,000 more deaths than births each year, which was comparable to the loss of a diocese every 12 months.
“Despite these trends of decline, about 50 percent of ‘cradle Episcopalians’ are being retained. Detailed analysis of our survey data suggests that The Episcopal Church does make up for some of its losses through ‘transfers in’-although not nearly at the same rate as in the historic past,” the report stated, with only one domestic US diocese, South Carolina, reporting growth in active members and communicants in good standing between 2003 and 2007.
Bishop of Peshawar urges British support for Church of Pakistan: CEN 4.03.09 p 6. April 4, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Church of Pakistan.comments closed
Christian schools and hospitals play a vital role in fostering interfaith dialogue, the Bishop of Peshawar has claimed, urging British support for the work of the Church of Pakistan.
Speaking last week at a conference in Scotland on minority churches in Islamic majority areas, the Bishop of Peshawar, the Rt. Rev. Mano Rumalshah said the North West Frontier Province was now one of the “most difficult areas in the world today.”
Home to 16 million people, the province was “very precarious and insecure for everybody,” Bishop Rumalshah told members of the World Mission Council of the Church of Scotland. “We have now become the capital for suicide bombers.”
The situation for the Christian minority community was “doubly precarious,” he said, as its members were subject to discrimination and prejudice.
While it accounted for only 3 percent of the population, the church’s “presence is multiplied by what we do” within the community. The church’s schools, hospitals, development programmes and social service agencies “reach out” to the wider community.
“Almost 95 percent of those who visit are Muslim” Bishop Ramalshah said, and “if we don’t engage through these places there is no other dialogue.”
Church surprised by Nazir Ali resignation: CEN 4.03.09 p 1. April 4, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Church of England, Church of England Newspaper.comments closed
The Bishop of Rochester, the Rt. Rev. Michael Nazir Ali, has announced that he will step down from office effective Sept 1. Saturday’s announcement has taken much of the church by surprise and prompted speculation the 59 year old bishop may take a new post outside the Church of England in support of the conservative movement within the Anglican Communion.
On March 28, a diocesan press statement said Dr. Nazir Ali would stand down to “work with a number of church leaders from areas where the church is under pressure, particularly in minority situations, who have asked him to assist them with education and training for their particular situation.”
Dr. Nazir Ali appended a personal note to the announcement saying he and his family thanked “God for his blessings and for friends we have made in the Diocese in the past 15 years. I am so grateful to God for the friendship and loyalty of those around us and ask for people’s prayers as we take this step of faith ‘not knowing where we are going’ (Heb 11:8).”
Details of Dr. Nazir Ali’s new work have not been finalized, the diocese noted, leading to press speculation that the church’s first non-white diocesan bishop’s decision to resign was driven by political pressures within the Church of England for him to go, coupled with claims he would be taking up work in his native Pakistan, the Gafcon movement, or in the United States.
However, the General Secretary of the Church of Pakistan, Humphrey Peters tells The Church of England Newspaper the news of the resignation came as a surprise. “So far we have no idea nor have we heard anything from Bishop Michael Nazir Ali. But, in case he feels like working for Church in Pakistan in these most critical times, the Church will be more than happy to welcome him.”
A spokesman for the Gafcon movement, stated while its leaders were generally aware of Dr. Nazir Ali’s wish to move on, they had no specific knowledge about his announcement. The Gafcon primates council—the reform movements seven archbishops—are scheduled to meet in London the week after Easter, however, a spokesman said he was not aware of Dr. Nazir Ali being on the agenda.
Speculation that Dr. Nazir Ali might take a leadership role in the third province movement in the US was downplayed by its leaders, who noted that there was no shortage of bishops in the breakaway group. Dr. Nazir Ali had sought out posts in the US in the past, and in 2004 explored becoming dean of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry, however US sources expect the conservative leader to lend his considerable talents to the church in the developing world.
“It was a total surprise,” the Bishop of Fort Worth, the Rt. Rev. Jack Iker noted.
In an encomium to Dr. Nazir Ali appended to the diocesan announcement of his retirement, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams said, “Bishop Michael’s decision to undertake this new and very challenging ministry will leave a real gap in the ranks of English bishops. His enormous theological skill, his specialist involvement in the complex debates around bioethics, his wide international experience and his clarity of mind and expression have made him a really valuable colleague, and he has served the Church and the wider society with dedication and distinction.”
“In his new work with churches in minority situations, he will need all our prayer and support. It is a courageous initiative and a timely one. I am personally very glad that I shall still be able to draw on his expertise and friendship, and wish him every strength and blessing in his work,” Dr. Williams said.
The Bishop of Southwark April 4, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Album (Photos), Church of England, Church of England Newspaper.comments closed
The Rt. Rev. Tom Butler, Bishop of Southwark in Porto Allegre, Brazil. Photo taken on Feb 13, 2006
Published in The Church of England Newspaper on April 3, 2009, p 5.
American Muslim-Anglican priest is deposed: CEN 4.02.09 April 2, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Syncretism, The Episcopal Church.comments closed
| The Episcopal Church’s “Muslim-Anglican” priest has been deposed from holy orders. In a statement released on April 1, the Diocese of Rhode Island said the Rt Rev Geralyn Wolf had “imposed a sentence of deposition” upon Dr Ann Holmes Redding as a “priest of the Church cannot be both a Christian and a Muslim.”
In a June 2007 interview with the Episcopal Voice, the Seattle-based Diocese of Olympia’s newspaper, the Dr. Redding announced she was both a Christian and a Muslim. “The way I understand Jesus is compatible with Islam,” she said. “I was following Jesus and he led me into Islam.” Read it all in The Church of England Newspaper. |
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