First published in The Living Church.

Swedish press reports that the Church of England and Church of Ireland will boycott the consecration of a partnered lesbian priest as Bishop of Stockholm are not true, spokesmen for the Archbishop of Canterbury and Archbishop of Armagh told The Living Church.

Nevertheless, no episcopal representatives from the Churches of England or Ireland, the Church in Wales or the Scottish Episcopal Church will be present for the Nov. 8 consecration of the Rev. Eva Brunne by Swedish Archbishop Anders Wejryd of Uppsala.

The Swedish Christian newspaper Dagen reported on Nov. 3 that the Church of England and Church of Ireland will boycott the ceremony as a sign of their displeasure with the ordination of Pastor Brunne, who lives with her partner, a fellow Church of Sweden pastor, the Rev. Gunilla Lindén.

Paul Harron, a spokesman for Archbishop Alan Harper, Primate of the Church of Ireland, said that while the substance of the comments attributed to Dr. Harper were correct, the archbishop “did not give such a statement to a Dagen journalist.”

Dr. Harper would “not think of this in terms of a ‘boycott,’ ” Mr. Harron said. The archbishop received an invitation, he said, but declined to attend.

The Archbishop of Armagh “has conveyed to the Church of Sweden that the Church of Ireland will not be officially represented at the episcopal consecration in Uppsala,” Mr. Harron said, as the “Church of Ireland is observing the moratorium” on the consecration of clergy with same-sex partners.

David Brownlie-Marshall, a spokesman for the Archbishop of Canterbury said the Church of England will be represented by the Area Dean of the Baltic and Nordic States of the Diocese of Gibraltar in Europe, the Rev. Nicholas Howe, chaplain of St. Peter and St. Sigfrid’s Church in Stockholm.

A “diary conflict” will prevent Fr. Howe from attending the consecration, Mr. Brownlie-Marshall said, but he will attend a subsequent reception. The Church of England’s Diocese of Portsmouth, which is twinned with the Diocese of Stockholm, will also send a representative to the reception.

Speaking to the Church of Sweden’s newspaper, the Kyrkans Tidning, Archbishop Wejryd said he did not expect the Archbishop of Canterbury to attend. “We send invitations to those with the highest rank. That’s why the Archbishop of Canterbury received an invitation, but no one expected him to say yes.”

The Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson, Bishop of New Hampshire, said he had “no plans to attend the consecration,” but noted that “it’s wonderful to see a church which chooses its bishops based on their experience, skills, and faithfulness, rather than on gender, sexual orientation and the like — a commitment I believe the Episcopal Church has now made.”

The consecration of Pastor Brunne follows the Oct. 22 vote by the Kyrkomötet, the church’s governing assembly, to permit clergy to conduct same-sex church weddings.

Writing to the Archbishop of Uppsala on June 26, the Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England said the adoption of gay marriage by the Swedish church is problematic.

The “teaching and discipline” of the Anglican Communion is that “it is not right either to bless same-sex sexual relationships or to ordain those who are involved in them,” the Archbishops’ Council said.

The way the Church of Sweden has gone about introducing gay-marriage liturgies is problematic, said the Suffragan Bishop in Europe, the Rt. Rev. David Hamid. The Porvoo Common Statement, which joined the Church of England and Church of Sweden in full Eucharistic fellowship in 1992, committed the partners to consultation with one another on issues of faith and order.

“Such a consultation has not happened on the matter of gender-neutral marriage,” Bishop Hamid said.

Tables detailing the ‘parish share’ contributed to each diocese by its church members have been given to Parliament by the Second Church Estates Commissioner, Sir Stuart Bell.

In response to a written question from the member for Stroud, Mr. David Drew (Lab.) on Oct 15, Sir Stuart reported that the 2007 figures for the Church of England, excluding the Diocese of Gibraltar in Europe and the Diocese of Sodor & Man varied widely, from a high of £461 per church member in the Diocese of Bradford to a low of £123 in the Diocese of Rochester.

Sir Stuart noted the “parish share is not necessarily paid for out of members’ voluntary giving,” but was the “best proxy” in response to the question of what average financial contribution was made to each diocese by each of its parishioners.

In response to a second question, Sir Stuart noted the Church Commissioners provided 15 per cent of the “running costs” of the Church of England in 2005 and 2006—the last years “for which whole-Church figures are available.”

Two new ‘Lords Spiritual’ will be introduced to Parliament next month. On Nov 3 the Bishop of Lichfield, the Rt. Rev. Jonathan Gledhill will be introduced to the House of Lords by the Bishops of Wakefield and Ripon and Leeds, while on Nov 24 the Rt. Rev. Anthony Priddis will be introduced by Bishop Gledhill and the Bishop of Manchester.

The two will be added to the roster of “duty bishops,” leading prayers in the Lords and participating in debates.

Bishop Gledhill said he looked forward to his work in Parliament. “I have been surprised at the strength of conviction from people of other faiths and none who have said to me that they value the contribution of the bishops in the Lords and that this is part of the constitution which should not be meddled with,” he said.

“Christian leaders have played an active role in parliament since at least the time when the Witans, consulted by Saxon Kings, were attended by religious leaders. The very name ‘Westminster’ reminds us of the Christian origins of our constitution, and in each generation Christian leaders have been active in contributing to our laws and advancing the values which underpin them,” he said.

The Archbishops of Canterbury and York, and the Bishops of London, Durham and Winchester are seated by right of office in the House of Lords, the remaining 21 Lords Spiritual are composed of the 21 other senior diocesan bishops.

First published in The Church of England Newspaper. The Bishop of Eastern Zambia has denounced political leaders who use public office to enrich themselves at the expense of their country. In a sermon preached at an ordination at St Luke’s Cathedral in Msoro on Oct 18, the Rt Rev William Mchombo warned that “politics, instead of being a tool to serve others has been reduced to a level where it is seen as a quick step from rugs to riches.”

“Some people even go to the extent of peddling lies — like building bridges where there are no rivers — and using vulgar language or purely tribal remarks in order to win votes for political office,” he said.

The bishop’s remarks come amidst growing civic unrest with the government of President Rupiah Banda’s decision not to pursue corruption charges against former President Frederick Chiluba. On Oct 2 the Bishop of Central Zambia, the Rt Rev Derek Kamukwamba called for national protests in response to the government’s decision. For democracy and the rule of law to be preserved it was necessary the appeals process “be exhausted and there should be no shortcuts,” Bishop Kamukwamba said.

The divide between the rich and poor in Zambia had widened in recent years, Bishop Mchombo said, such that we “live in a world today where a few people swim in riches and the majority drown in poverty, pollution, disease and violence.”

Small steps such as the maintenance of roads would do more for the people of the Central African country than grandiose projects. “A subsistence farmer cannot access the market owing to deplorable roads,” the bishop said, and “at the end of the day, the produce is sold to briefcase buyers.” In its leader of Oct 19, the Zambia Post endorsed the bishop’s call for clean government, stating that “it is true that most of our people are seeking political leadership positions as a stepping stone to government resources, to enriching themselves.”

“Elections in this country are no longer generally seen as a competition to serve,” the newspaper said. “They are increasingly becoming a competition for financial survival.”

First published in The Church of England Newspaper. The Episcopal Church of the Sudan (ECS) has created four new dioceses and elected seven new bishops at meeting of the provincial synod and House of Bishops in Juba last week. On Oct 24, five priests were elected to serve as the first Bishops of Terekeka, Pacong, Akot, Twic East and Nzara. Elections were also held to fill the vacant sees of Wau and Rejaf, while the sees of two new dioceses were left unfilled: Wad Medani and Aweil.

The Feb 15 provincial synod created the Dioceses of Pakong and Akot out of the Diocese of Rumbek in the Lakes State of Southern Sudan and the dioceses’ two assistant bishops: the Rt Rev Joseph Maker and the Rt Rev Isaac Dhieu were nominated to stand for election as diocesan bishops. Both bishops ran unopposed and the House of Bishops confirmed Bishop Maker as Bishop of Pakong and Bishop Dhieu as Bishop of Akot.

The Diocese of Terekeka was carved out of the diocese of Juba in January 2009, and the Assistant Bishop of Juba the Rt Rev Micah Leila nominated as its first bishop by the provisional diocesan synod. Bishop Leila faced no opposition in his election and was confirmed in the post.

The Diocese of Nzara was carved out of the Diocese of Yambio along Sudan’s border with the Congo earlier this year. The Diocese of Yambio’s development officer, the Rev Samuel Enosa Peni ran unopposed in the election and was confirmed in office.

The new Diocese of Twic East faced a contested election after the archbishop’s commissary Archdeacon Joseph Mabior Garang was killed on Aug 28 by gunmen. The Assistant Bishop of Bor, the Rt Rev Ezekiel Diing polled three quarters of the votes cast and was named bishop-elect of Twic East in the Diocese of Juba was killed last month.

In the election to fill the vacant see of the Diocese of Wau, the Rev Moses Deng Bol received 62 per cent of the votes cast and was named bishop-elect, while the former General Secretary of the Episcopal Church of the Sudan Canon Enock Tombe polled 76 per cent of the votes cast and was elected Bishop of Rejaf.

The Diocese of Aweil was inaugurated last week, formed from the an archdeaconry of the southern diocese of Wau, while the Diocese of Wad Medani was carved out of the southern half of the Diocese of Khartoum along the Blue Nile. The first enthronement for the new bishops will take place on Nov 1 in Terekeka, the ECS reported.

First published in The Church of England Newspaper.   The Anglican Archbishop of Adelaide has called upon the Australian government to institute a code of practice for advertising directed towards children, arguing that the reliance upon sex to sell products to children was a form of “corporate paedophilia.” Speaking to the opening session of the Diocese of Adelaide’s annual synod on Oct 23, Archbishop Jeffrey Driver denounced marketing that presented children in sexually provocative ways.

“Children have a right to their childhood, but it is being taken from them through the hyper-sexualised environment in which they now grow up,” he said, adding that “at an increasingly early age,” children were being “caught up” in a culture of sex, violence and drugs.

Girl’s clothing often was a “highly sexualised, mini versions of adult fashion,” while some child’s magazines advised five- and six-year-olds “how to look hot and catch a boy,” the archbishop said.

“There are strong suggestions that this premature sexualisation of children could play a role in grooming children for paedophiles, preparing children for sexual interaction with older teenagers or adults,” Archbishop Driver said. The archbishop’s concerns about the debasement of children have also been a matter of concern for the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams. In 2007 Dr Williams endorsed the Children’s Society report entitled Commercialisation of Childhood that found that children were being “engulfed” by sexually suggestive images about how they should look and feel, and what items they should own.

Dr Williams said there was “an increasing political and social consensus that something needs to be done to safeguard children from the worst excesses of direct marketing and the pressures of commercialisation.”

First published in The Church of England Newspaper.   The Bishop of the Bahamas has denounced government plans to restore capital punishment. In his charge to the diocese’s 109th synod gathered at Christ Church Cathedral in Nassau, Bishop Laish Boyd told delegates that hanging was “not a deterrent to crime.” “The disregard for human life and a perverted value system which allows a person to maim or to kill another in a dispute, are realities that capital punishment cannot ever address, even though a hanging may satisfy the desire for retribution,” he said on Oct 21.

On Dec 19, 2008 St Kitts and Nevis hanged Charles Laplance for the 2006 murder of his wife — the first execution in the West Indies since the execution for murder of David Mitchell in the Bahamas in 2000.

Following Mitchell’s hanging there was a de facto ban on capital punishment in the English-speaking Caribbean in the wake of a 2000 ruling by the Privy Council, which 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.

Political pressures upon the Caribbean governments to respond to the sharp rise in crime has led to a restoration of capital punishment. In November 2008, the Jamaican parliament rejected a ban on capital punishment, with the Trinidad parliament following suit in February. The Bahamas legislature is currently debating restoring capital punishment. As of Sept 18, 2009 the West Indian nation recorded 59 homicides, Minister of National Security Tommy Turnquest reported last week.

“The real issue is the fragmentation of relationship and of family life as we know it,” Bishop Boyd said, as “too many children are being born to parents who are unable to socialize and care for them properly. What we need is for parents to be parents and to raise children to honor and respect God and humanity. We have strayed far from this in some quarters and we need to get back to it.”

At their Nov 2008 meeting, the House of Bishops of the Church of the Province of the West Indies called for an end to capital punishment. “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,” the bishops called on “our people to stand with us in our opposition to the death penalty.”

First published in The Church of England Newspaper. The Church of Ireland’s Bishop of Cork has accused Irish Education Minister Batt O’Keefe of hiding behind his legal advisers in a row over a cut in government funding for Protestant schools. In a speech given last week at Midleton College, Cork, the Rt Rev Paul Colton denounced the “brutality and financial back street butchery inflicted on Protestant schools in last year’s budget.”

Protestant secondary schools were removed from the free education scheme, after more than 40 years, with grants for caretaker and secretarial expenses discontinued. In his Oct 20 charge to the Dublin and Glendalough synod, Archbishop John Neill charged the cuts were politically motivated, with the government assuming that Protestant schools only catered to the wealthy.

The Irish government had mounted a “very determined and doctrinaire effort… to strike at a sector which some officials totally failed to understand,” the archbishop said.

In a statement given to the Dáil on Oct 20 Mr O’Keefe defended the government decision to withdraw the €2.8m subsidy saying the attorney general had advised him that it was unconstitutional. However, he declined to release the report saying it was confidential, adding that the Church of Ireland had so far failed to come up with alternatives to the Budget cuts.

Bishop Colton responded, “Are we seriously to believe that the founding fathers and framers of our Constitution envisaged a situation where this Republic would become a hostile place for the children of the Protestant minority?” Mr O’Keefe was hiding “behind secret advice about the document, not his alone, but the charter of the people of this country – our Constitution,” the bishop charged.

He also denied the government’s assertion the Church of Ireland had not offered its own proposal, noting he had met “with some of the Minister’s most senior officials” to discuss the issues.

“Our proposal is this and for clarity I state it, yet again, publicly, we want our schools, in their uniquely difficult situation, restored to parity with schools in the free scheme, where they have been since free education was introduced 42 years ago,” he said.

However the minister “chooses not to hear it,” Bishop Colton charged.

First published in The Church of England Newspaper. Episcopal Relief & Development (ERD) of the American Episcopal Church has filed suit against the Church of South India (CSI) to recover £1 million allegedly stolen by its former General Secretary Dr Pauline Sathiamurthy. Detectives from the Central Crime Branch of the Madras police arrested Dr Sathiamurthy and three members of her family on Oct 13, after the church turned over the results of an internal investigation to prosecutors.

In a statement released on Oct 23, ERD said that two years ago it had “approached the local Church authorities with concerns when CSI failed to complete the financial reporting and required audits outlined in our agreement for 2005 and 2006. As a result, we suspended work with CSI and implemented an in-depth effort to account for the missing funds. After a lengthy process, we deeply regret that we have been forced to take legal action.”

“While this situation is highly unusual,” it said, “we strive to honour our commitment to the people we serve around the world and the generosity of our faithful donors.”

The funds sent to the CSI were “only a portion of our tsunami response work,” ERD added, noting that “as per standard plans and procedures, clean audits were completed with our church partners in both North India and Sri Lanka.”

However, “as this is a legal matter, we cannot comment further about the current situation. We have faith in the Indian judicial system and believe this case will be handled fairly,” ERD said.

South African president Jacob Zuma has urged religious leaders in the Western Cape to work with the government to combat racial and ethnic strife.

Speaking to approximately 500 religious leaders at a meeting held at Bishopscourt, the home of the Archbishop of Cape Town Thabo Makgoba on Oct 17, President Zuma “called on religious leaders to work together in dealing with the perception that the Western Cape is racially divided,” said the president’s spokesman Zizi Kodwa.

The president’s meeting with religious leaders comes amidst shifting political fortunes for South Africa’s religious groups, with the president turning to conservative and traditional religious leaders to bolster his regime, freezing out liberal denominations and church organizations from the country’s corridors of power.

South Africa was a religious and interfaith state the president told me the meeting. But many of its citizens had forgotten the Biblical principle of “love thy neighbour,” leading to a breakdown of community and social order.

Religious leaders had an important part to play in building society, and should continue to speak out on social and moral issues, the president said. The problems of crime, deteriorating public services and morals, and poverty were top of the list for the religious leaders present.

On Oct 16, Archbishop Makgoba said the agenda for the day’s meeting would center round “what it means to be human in the context of protests and strikes over the delivery of services to our people; and how the religious community can maintain a critical engagement with the President.”

President Zuma’s meeting with the religious leaders comes amidst a shift in the political fortunes of South Africa’s churches. The South African Council of Churches (SACC), a long time political ally of the African National Congress (ANC) party has fallen out of favor with President Zuma and the ruling faction of the ANC, after it was seen to have backed former President Thabo Mbeki in the party’s leadership struggle.

The conservative National Interfaith Leadership Council (NILC) has stepped into the gap, offering its support to the president. Among the council’s twenty leaders are four ANC MP’s and including ANC chief whip Mathole Motshekga and former Western Cape premier Ebrahim Rasool.

In September the Rev. Nthabiseng Khunou, an ANC MP and member of the NILC secretariat, told the South Africa’s Mail & Guardian the NILC would “play a role” in revisiting legislation legalising abortion and gay marriage.

“I know most churches want them abolished, so the reason for NILC is to give a voice to people who don’t have it,” Mr. Khunou said.