Prayers For Our Nation

If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.  2 Chronicles 7:14 (ESV)

It is no secret that our nation is more divided than ever.  This is an election year and November will either cement us onto the path we are currently traveling or will set the pendulum swinging in a new direction.  Whatever our fate, we as Christians have a duty to seek God’s will.  There is much we need to take before Him in prayer.  We all need to listen more than we talk.  The following list is only a beginning.  You are invited to add your own reminders of what we need to prayerfully consider and embrace as November approahces.

We pray that You teach us how to prepare our hearts in order that we may seek You and serve You.

We pray that you open our eyes to our own sins and so convict us that we turn and repent.

We pray that we seek truth and use that truth to wage our battles forsaking violence of any kind.

We pray for wisdom and discernment as we prepare to go to the polls.

We pray that You will raise up Godly leaders.

We pray that You give us the wisdom to discern these Godly leaders.

We pray, Dear Lord, that we become a nation of prayer warriors who seek Your face daily.

[Bumped For Obvious Reasons] Kendall Harmon—Crisis, Part 5: Iceberg - Humanness

Allah is not God: A Brief Comment on the ‘Insider Movement’

The Insider movement encourages new Christian converts in predominantly Muslim countries to remain in the mosque, continue to say Muslim prayers, read the Koran as sacred literature, and call themselves Muslims. Here’s John Piper’s take on the movement. One way or another, every church leader who support missions among Muslims needs to answer this question with regard to contextualization: how far is too far? Missions agencies advocate different approaches, and missionaries often develop new theories and methods in the field, so many churches have studied the issue and developed their own guidelines for strategy and support.

I agree with John Piper. The “Allah” Muslims worship is not the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is a false god. The revelation of Jesus Christ in the New Testament is that God is triune - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - and that Jesus is God’s eternal Son incarnate in human flesh. Muslims deny both propositions. Muslims and Christians cannot both be right about the nature and character of God. One group is guilty of idolatry.

The New Testament is very clear both about the origin and nature of non-Christian faiths and about the duty of Christians in relationship to them:

“What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that fan idol is anything? 20 No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons. 21 You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and ithe cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and jthe table of demons. 22 Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he?” (1 Cor 10:19-21)

Paul lays down four principles here:

1. The grace of Christ is not mediated through non-Christian spiritualities. God does not save pagans through pagan worship.

2. Nor do they worship “other gods”. The idols themselves are “nothing”.

3. While God will not mediate salvation through idolatrous worship and the idols themselves are “nothing”, pagan worship is the worship of “something” namely the demonic. Hell is the origin of other spiritualities.

4. Therefore, Christians must not participate in any form of pagan worship.

In sum, all spirituality, all religion, that does not flow from and submit to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ has its origin in Hell. This is not to say that there is no beauty or truth in other religions and spiritualities. It is to say that beauty and truth exists in other religions like wine in Hamlet’s goblet. It is both sweet and poisonous.

It is therefore necessary - it is an Apostolic command - that those God transfers from the kingdom of darkness to the Kingdom of his Son Jesus Christ, remove themselves from the worship of idols. “You cannot” after all, “partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons.”

Those behind the Insider Movement - though undoubtedly with good intentions, undoubtedly in the name of evangelism and physical safety - teach new converts to betray the Lord who bought them. How can those who have surrendered to Jesus Christ as Lord bow to the Muslim Allah? What does Christ have to do with Belial? What agreement has the temple of God with idols?

Christian University Requires Staff Sign Morality Pledge

Plainly stated: the opposition to the regulatory mechanism isn’t likely to lead Shorter University to reverse course. Aside from forbidding an active role in a gay relationship, the lifestyle pledge also bans pre-marital sex, adultery and drug use and abuse. Additionally, employees are asked to be active members of a church and to live their lives as committed, Bible-believing followers of Jesus Christ.

“Shorter University will hire persons who are committed Bible believing Christians, who are dedicated to integrating biblical faith in their classes and who are in agreement with the University Statement of Faith,” the document reads. “Moreover, employees are expected to be active members of a local church.”

Michael Wilson, a tenured librarian who has worked at the school for 14 years, had originally planned to stay until retirement. Now, in light of the statement’s enforcement, he has handed in his resignation. Wilson, who is gay, naturally refused to sign the document, calling his choice “a matter of conscience.”

  The entire article can be read here.

Any bets there will be five applications for each vacancy?

Luke Timothy Johnson: An Honest Heretic

Luke Timothy Johnson used to be a hero of mine. One of the keys to my conversion was being convinced that the New Testament provided a reliable witness to the words and deeds of Jesus. Along with the brilliant work of NT Wright and others on the “historical Jesus”, Johnson’s scathing response to the Jesus Seminar proved a considerable help. Now that I thumb back through his work, The Real Jesus, I see the holes in his thinking that I missed way back then, his central refutation of the Jesus Seminar being grounded not in the New Testament but in the living experience of Jesus in the Church.

Since that time Luke Timothy Johnson has succumbed to the arguments of those who want to normalize homosexual behavior in the church. Unsurprisingly, he grounds his present position in the “experience thousands of others have witnessed to, which tells us that to claim our own sexual orientation is in fact to accept the way in which God has created us.”

Despite his heretical turn, he remains an honest scholar, retaining his integrity in the effusive tide of scholarly frauds:

I have little patience with efforts to make Scripture say something other than what it says, through appeals to linguistic or cultural subtleties. The exegetical situation is straightforward: we know what the text says. But what are we to do with what the text says? We must state our grounds for standing in tension with the clear commands of Scripture, and include in those grounds some basis in Scripture itself. To avoid this task is to put ourselves in the very position that others insist we already occupy—that of liberal despisers of the tradition and of the church’s sacred writings, people who have no care for the shared symbols that define us as Christian. If we see ourselves as liberal, then we must be liberal in the name of the gospel, and not, as so often has been the case, liberal despite the gospel.

I think it important to state clearly that we do, in fact, reject the straightforward commands of Scripture, and appeal instead to another authority when we declare that same-sex unions can be holy and good. And what exactly is that authority? We appeal explicitly to the weight of our own experience and the experience thousands of others have witnessed to, which tells us that to claim our own sexual orientation is in fact to accept the way in which God has created us. By so doing, we explicitly reject as well the premises of the scriptural statements condemning homosexuality—namely, that it is a vice freely chosen, a symptom of human corruption, and disobedience to God’s created order…more

PCUSA: We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Rules!

There is something sad about watching a denomination crumble before one’s very eyes. Case in point: the Presbyterian Church (USA).

One of the PCUSA’s most notorious advocates for LGBTICQXYZ causes is the Rev. Jane Spahr. She has repeatedly defied the denomination’s ban on performing same-sex weddings. As a result, the Permanent Judicial Commission of Redwoods Presbytery in California held a trial, found she had violated her ordination vows as well as the PCUSA Book of Order and issued a formal “rebuke” of Spahr. That verdict was appealed to the Synod PJC, and then to the General Assembly PJC, the highest judicial authority in the denomination. The GAPJC’s decision included the following:

On April 28, 2008, this Commission issued its Decision and Order in the case of Jane Adams Spahr v. Presbytery of the Redwoods. That decision stated that a same-sex ceremony is not a marriage and that officers of the PC(USA) shall not state, imply, or represent that a same-sex ceremony is a marriage. On May 17, 2008, the Supreme Court of California ruled that same-sex marriages were legal under California law. Same-sex marriages were sanctioned by the State of California from June 20, 2008, through November 4, 2008. During that time period Spahr performed wedding ceremonies for approximately sixteen same-sex couples.

In 2010, a prosecuting committee of the Presbytery brought charges against Spahr for officiating at these ceremonies and a three-day trial was held before the PPJC in August 2010. At the conclusion of the trial the PPJC found her guilty of three of the four charges, issued a Rebuke, and enjoined her “to avoid such offenses in the future.” The PPJC also declared that the “rebuke and injunction shall not be imposed” until any appeals were complete. Spahr appealed to the SPJC, which affirmed the decision of the PPJC on March 25, 2011. That ruling was appealed by Spahr, and on February 20, 2012, the GAPJC sided with the Synod to say that the change in state law had no effect on the church’s definition of marriage that can be authorized by the PC(USA).

So to recap: three different judicial authorities of the church found Spahr guilty, and ordered her rebuked by her presbytery for violation of her ordination vows and the Book of Order. Yesterday, her presbytery offered its response: you’re not the boss of us! Evangelical leader Mary Holder Naegeli has the full resolution:

The Presbytery opposes imposition of the rebuke as set forth in the decision of the Presbytery Permanent Judicial Commission, dated August 27, 2010 (which was stayed by its terms until the present day), by declaring and resolving as follows:

WHEREAS, our primary ordination vow as Ruling and Teaching Elders is to be obedient to Jesus Christ, the Word of God, as the Scriptures bear witness to him, (F-1.02; W-4.4003 (a);

WHEREAS, the love of God in Jesus Christ is for all people, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people;

WHEREAS, the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the constitution require that full inclusion and pastoral care be extended to all members of the church;

WHEREAS,  this Presbytery called the Rev. Dr. Jane Adams Spahr to a ministry in outreach to- and in community among and with – lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people;

WHEREAS, the 38-year ministry of the Rev. Dr. Jane Adams Spahr has been faithful to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to her calling;

WHEREAS, the decision of the August 27, 2010, by its terms, acknowledges and apologizes (1) that the rules of the church “are against the Gospel,” and (2) that the decision and rebuke continue the grievous harm “that has been, and continues to be, done” by the church to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people “in the name of Jesus Christ”;

Be it RESOLVED that the Presbytery of the Redwoods opposes imposition of the rebuke set forth in the decision dated August 27, 2010, as inconsistent with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA), and the faithful life of ministry lived out in this Presbytery.

When the vacuous rhetoric is eliminated, what we are left with is this: we don’t care what the denomination says, we’re going to do things our way. If you don’t like it, you’re a bigot, a homophobe, and a poopyhead.

Even though those who brought this action before the presbytery had not let the body know about it ahead of time, they did alert the media, which descended to see if the forces of righteousness would slay the evil fundies. Rev. Naegeli mentions that there were three camera crews filming the proceedings, and four representatives of the San Francisco Presbytery were present. One of the latter spoke to the assembled multitudes and declared, “I know there are a few people in this room who are against me on this. If you vote ‘No,’ you might as well just spit in my face, because that is what you are doing.”

According to the Layman Online, the purpose for this ecclesiastical theater was articulated by one of Spahr’s lawyers, the Rev. Beverly Brewster, who told the Los Angeles Times that “If the rebuke against Janie had been delivered today, then all ministers who marry same-gender couples in jurisdictions where it is legal would have a disciplinary precedent against them. That’s what we avoided today.”

In secular legal parlance, this is known as “nullification,” and is partly what the Civil War was fought over. Redwoods Presbytery (and others before it) are essentially claiming the same right in an ecclesiastical setting that the Southern states claimed, i.e., that they have the right to ignore anything in the denominational standards that they don’t like or consider “harmful.” It doesn’t matter that the PCUSA’s General Assembly is meeting in a few weeks and will, for the 4724th time debate this issue, and possibly change it in a manner acceptable to supporters of same-sex marriage. Instead, they have declared that because they are saintly and just, and their causes right and true, they have no need to using the established means for changing denominational policy (especially because all of the bigots and homophobes keep getting in their way).

I understand this will get no sympathy from the Anglican readers of Stand Firm. You’ve been through it before. But Presbyterians were supposed to be legalists. Turns out they are every bit the antinomians as their cousins in fancy vestments.

Catholic University Drops Student Health Insurance, Cites Obamacare

In its decision to drop coverage, the school cited the contraception mandate, but also a requirement that the maximum coverage amount be increased to $100,000 for policyholders—claiming that would have made premiums skyrocket. A university official told Fox News Radio the students’ basic $600 policy was going to double in cost in the fall and triple next year and that the school’s insurance provider said the increases were the result of the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

“This is putting people in a position where they are having to choose between their faith and their morality, and now an unjust cost,” said Mike Hernon, the school’s vice president of advancement. “These sorts of regulations from the government are forcing our hand in a way that’s really wrong.”

Hernon also told Fox News on Wednesday that the changes represented a “moral and economic injustice.”

The entire article can be read here.

[Bumped For Obvious Reasons] Kendall Harmon—Crisis, Part 4: Iceberg - Marriage

Row between ASA and Archbishop Cranmer Makes the Daily Mail

His Grace has made the Daily Mail: 

The ASA has stressed that the adverts, rather than the blogger, are the subject of their probe - and insist he is not compelled to justify the campaign message.
However, Archbishop Cranmer - who takes his pseudonym from a sixteenth-century reformer - remained adamant that the ASA is trying to restrict his and the Coalition for Marriage’s right to free speech.

In a post attacking the anonymous complainants he wrote: ‘They called in the Gestapo to censor the assertion that marriage is a life-long union between one man and one woman, in accordance with the teaching of the Established Church, the beliefs of its Supreme Governor, and the law of the land.’

Fellow ecclesiastical bloggers leapt to his defence and even the National Secular Society, which is in favour of legalising same-sex marriage, has stood by him.

Isn’t it interesting to see the reaction of ASA once their bully tactics have been exposed to the light of day?  Makes it very clear what happens when the people take a stand and refuse to be budged - or nudged as Cass Sunstein prefers to call it. 

Interesting indeed. 

It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, No - It’s Uncle Sam

Call me old fashion but I am not really thrilled about the new eye in the sky program.

The Federal Aviation Administration on Monday began to explain the rules of the sky for these newly licensed drones at potentially dozens of sites across the country. The agency, on its website, said that government “entities” will have to obtain a special certificate in order to fly the aircraft, adding that the FAA is “streamlining the process for public agencies to safely fly (drones) in the nation’s airspace.”

In doing so, the government is taking a tool that has become synonymous with U.S. counterterror warfare in countries like Pakistan and Yemen—and putting it in the hands of U.S. law enforcement.

Unlike some of the drones used overseas, these will not be equipped with missiles. They are to be used purely for surveillance. But that alone has raised serious privacy concerns on Capitol Hill and beyond.

Not equipped with missiles - now isn’t that special.

Same-Sex Marriage in Medieval Irish Churches? Boswell Sinks to a New Academic Low

Like me you’ve probably seen this sort of thing doing the rounds on teh intarweb recently:

Prof John Boswell, the late chairman of Yale University’s history department, found there were ceremonies called the Office of Same-Sex Union and the Order for Uniting Two Men in the 10th to 12th centuries.

The medievalist published Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century in 1980.

According to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies section of Yale University’s website, the controversial book argued that the modern Catholic Church’s stance on homosexuality ‘departed from the tolerance and even celebration of homosexual love that had characterized the first millennium of the Church’s teachings’.

The research brings into perspective the debate raging in America over same-sex marriage after President Barack Obama announced that he now supports it.

The chronicler Gerald of Wales (‘Geraldus Cambrensis’) recorded same-gender Christian unions taking place in Ireland in the late 12th and early 13th centuries.

And, of course, there are wild cries of delight at this “proof” that Christians in the middle-ages were happily wedding men to each other.

Friends, it’s nothing but plain dishonesty on the part of “academics” like Boswell. Gerald of Wales’ record of Ireland “The Topography of Ireland” is freely available online [pdf] and I’m surprised nobody has yet simply read through it and fisked Boswell’s appalling argument.

Here’s the actual citation Boswell makes to prove his point from a section entitled “the making of leagues” or “the making of brothers:

...then they go in procession around the church, and afterwards entering within its walls, they confederate themselves in an indissoluble alliance before the altar, with oaths prodigally multiplied upon the relics of the saints, and confirmed by the celebration of the mass and prayers of the holy priests

Now, any honest reader would have to admit that it’s certainly not conclusive evidence of a rite of same-sex marriage. But even that’s not the argument. Here’s the argument: the context (p.77, my emphasis):

Chapter XXII: Of a new mode of making a league/brotherhood: a proof of their wickedness

Among many other inventions of their abominable guile, there is one which especially proves it. When they wish to take off any one, they assemble in a company  with him at some holy place, under the guise of religious and peaceful meeting; then they go in procession around the church, and afterwards entering within its walls, they confederate themselves in an indissoluble alliance before the altar, with oaths prodigally multiplied upon the relics of the saints, and confirmed by the celebration of the mass and prayers of the holy priests, as if it were a solemn affiance. At length, as a still stronger ratification of their league, and, as it were, the completion of their affair, they drink each others’ blood, which is shed for the purpose. This custom has been handed down from the rites of the heathens, who were wont to seal their treaties in blood. How often, in the very act of such an alliance being made by bloody and deceitful men, has so much blood been fraudulently and iniquitously spilt, that one or other of them has fainted on the spot! How often has the same hour which witnessed the contract, or that which followed it, seen it broken in an unheard-of manner by a bloody divorce!

So a number of quite obvious things:

1. There really is very little indication at all that this is a homosexual union; it reads like a social pact between men - an alliance. Perhaps between warlords or elders.
2. It’s quite obvious that Gerald thinks the whole thing is abominable and pagan. At every point he argues that it’s a corruption of true Christian religion and the worst kind of corruption. In chapter XIX he argues that they are ignorant of the basics of the Christian faith.
3. The chapter is part of a long section of Gerald providing copious proofs that the Irish are wicked in almost every way.
4. Thus it follows that even if this was a homosexual union (which is really a massive stretch in itself) it is presented as being utterly contrary to good Christian order. Gerald makes a point of observing that to carry it out in church with the complicity of priests and a mass is only to compound the wickedness.

And yet Boswell is putting this forward as an example of medieval “Christian” same-sex marriage.

Which, friends, betrays an utter lack of intellectual and academic integrity. But then that’s liberal “Christian” hermeneutic for you. Seriously.

“...not only in ages past” - The Martyrs of Sudan and current opportunities to stand with them

May 16 commemorates The Martyrs of Sudan.  I am honored to celebrate Holy Communion at Calvary Cathedral, Sioux Falls at 12:15 on this day.  These are not figures from ancient church history or legends, but Christians who died for their faith in the closing decades of the last century and continue to suffer in the first decades of this new millennium. 

Last year, South Sudan became the world’s newest nation.  The main thrust of independence was to free the largely Christian population from the Islamist government of Sudan, with its capitol in Khartoum. 

The Anglican Province for the nation, The Episcopal Church of Sudan, strives to serve Christians on both sides of the border and to work for peace between the two nations.  Sudan’s Archbishop, The Most Reverend Dr. Daniel Deng Bul Yak, recently issued a gracious, balanced and impassioned appeal for peace in his conflicted province. 

The Christian people of Sudan need our support in prayer.  The Anglican prayer blog Lent & Beyond is providing resources for the Global Day of Prayer on Pentecost, which falls on May 27 this year.  This prayer focus includes intercession for the persecuted church in Sudan and around the world.

Along with our intercession to Almighty God, we can speak up for South Sudan and Sudan with those who hold public authority.  The Episcopal Church (TEC) in the U.S.A. has a page with prayer, information and advocacy links.

Here in South Dakota, the leadership of “Lost Boy” Moses Deng Joknhial II led to Rebuilding South Sudan Through Education.    I encourage you to visit the link and read the truly amazing story of what has been accomplished in Moses’ home village of Pajut.

Originally run with gracious administrative support from the Diocese of South Dakota, the project is now incorporating as a separate non-profit.  I’ve been honored with a place on the newly formed Board of Directors, and my parish will host its upcoming organizational meeting.

You can have a big impact right now: a donor has set up a matching grant up to $10,000.  So every gift is doubled, with potential for $20,000 on this initiative alone.  If God gives you the inspiration and means to donate, it will be a blessing as Christians build up their communities in the face of formidable challenges.  Current project initiatives include emphasis on maternal-fetal health and microeconomics.  You can contact me via private message here at Stand Firm, or use the current project contact information.

Thank you and God bless you for supporting his people in South Sudan and Sudan.

Adoption, Abortion and “Gay Marriage” - Joining the Dots with Jesus

This is going to be a bit of a ramble. Grab a cup of something and sit down with me…

I’ve been working through the latest government adoption report [pdf] in Australia, prompted by my previous post and I came across this chilling sentence (chapter 4, p.34):

Broader social trends, such as declining fertility rates, the wider availability of effective birth control and the emergence of family planning centres have also likely contributed to a reduction in Australian children requiring adoption (ABS 2009a).

So 3 reasons have led to reductions in adoption:

1. Declining fertility
2. birth control
3. family planning centres

Note how the report distinguishes between 2&3. That’s because “family planning centres” are not the same as “wider availability of effective birth control”. They’re the places where abortions happen. A far more honest report would just state that up-front. There are far less adoptions because abortion is simply much more readily available. I mean, just look at the charts,

ADOPTIONS IN AUSTRALIA, 1968-69 TO 1995-96

(source Australian Bureau of Statistics).

As the adoption report states, this is partly due to “reduction in fertility”, as evidenced here (again, source: ABS):

Total fertility rate, Australia - 1930 to 2010

We ought to bear in mind that the reduced fertility rate has much to do with the prevalence of abortions. There were 297,900 registered births in Australia in 2010 (source: ABS) but there are also (conservatively estimated [wiki]) over 70,000 abortions in Australia each year . The ABS expresses it this way:

The reinterpretation of abortion law in New South Wales in 1971 was associated with a substantial fall in births to young women and an increase in the median age of mothers.

1971. That’s not hard to spot on the fertility rate graph, is it? Similar changes occurred all over Australia. QED.

Now, here’s the crunch. It has often been observed that many of those campaigning most vociferously for “gay rights” (not least in the area of adoption) are also those who are campaing for “reproductive rights”, i.e. the right to abort. There’s a basic disconnect there. On the one hand the push for adoption is couched in the language of “providing loving parents for unwanted children”. On the other hand the push for abortion is all about the disposal of unwanted children.

Which, I suggest, begins to indicate an alternative base motivation that also influences the whole push - that of children as commodity. The push to grant “adoption rights” is really often about our own desire to have the child. When the children are “wanted” then who dare stand in the way of a prospective parent, homosexual or otherwise? When the children are “unwanted” then who dare stand in the way of the soon-to-be-non-parent? Either way, it is the desire of the adult that is the driving motivation to which we are told we must conform, not the needs of the child. This is, of course, particularly acute in the matter of abortion but also, I would suggest, in the matter of adoption too where there are, granted, mixed motives involved.

So is there a better way forward? Surely there must be and it must hang first and foremost on the value of each life and a proper understanding of how life is intended to be nurtured. One of the reasons that “gay marriage” should be so vigorously opposed is not because it is somehow the thin end of the wedge but, more accurately, that it is the capstone that marks the crystallisation of a remarkable shift in our Western culture. We have utterly divorced marriage from procreation and the raising of children. I’m indebted to John Richardson for pointing this out most clearly although I can’t immediately find the comment on another blog. His basic premise was that we are seeing the outworking of this divorce between marriage and children across the board in single parents struggling to raise children, increased abortion, cohabitation and so on. Ask your local school principal what the main source of disruption in their classrooms is and they’ll tell you it’s broken families. As we move further and further away from the way it was intended to be, downplaying heterosexual marriage and child-rearing as normative, we get more and more messed up. People live together and then split up causing immense emotional pain. Children are raised without the optimum parental situation, if they’re lucky enough to be born at all, and so on. All “gay marriage” does is put the cherry on the icing on the cake.

Which is why the debate over “gay marriage” is so important because it’s almost as though we have one final attempt, out of love, to speak to our culture and implore them to stop and think what they’re doing as they continue in the relentless push to endorse self-fulfilment as the great moral good. Every time someone says “why shouldn’t I be allowed to do what I want?” that’s what’s really happening (and there is, perhaps, a word there for our socially-conservative libertarian friends too). Marriage used to be understood not least to be the regulation of those desires for the sake of the weakest parties in the relationships - the women and children. It is, of course, more than that but it is not least that. Now it is to be finally redefined as “me doing what I want to do and insisting that you recognise and affirm it”. Sacrifice and self-giving love has been replaced with gratification and self-fulfilling love. No wonder we’re such a mess.

And into all this Jesus still walks, the One who came to serve, not to be serve. The One who laid down His life for others, not least for His own bride. The One who bid little children come unto Him when others pushed them away as being less important. The One who affirmed that “in the beginning God made the male and female”, indeed the One who made them made and female in the first place.

And, of course, the One who went to those of His own day who had messed this all up so much with their own sin and who suffered from others’ sin - prostitutes, a socially outcast woman at a well and so on - and offered them mercy.

His way is the better way. And Christian let’s never forget; it’s not simply the way of heterosexual marriage and the affirmation of the precious value of life (although it certainly is those things), it’s also the way of the offer of forgiveness and a fresh start. It occurs to me that we are in danger of losing sight of that as the debate intensifies. If you’re a Christian will you resolve with me to not give up on this issue. To not give up out of love for the nation we live in - because we want the very best for the people all around us who cannot tell their right hand from their left. But also not to give up on speaking the gospel rather than mere moralism. We’re pushing towards diagnosing the problem, but the solution isn’t simply trying harder or being better at doing things the way that we were created to do them - it’s forgiveness and a fresh start.

Captain Smith Addresses the Crew

On the occasion of the aftermath of the unfortunate encounter with the iceberg:

Not Being Overcome by Fear

Our attention as a staff will undoubtedly become increasingly focused on General Convention as we enter the homestretch to July. Some of that attention will be on various resolutions reflecting things that we as a staff are working on. Some of it will be on what it feels like to be micromanaged by a committee of over a thousand people. A great deal of it, no doubt, will be on the budget and the budget’s consequences for the work we do and on our livelihoods. There is no doubt that General Convention is an anxious time for the staff of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society. It is for the Church as a whole, too. And it is even more anxious at this moment of fundamental change, and indeed, crisis.

With that in mind, it is perhaps a good time to remind you of something I said when I first had the chance to address you as a staff last September.

I believe The Episcopal Church is being called to a great adventure at this particular moment, the adventure of reforming the Church for a world unlike any it has ever tried to serve before. All of us, to one extent or another, are having a hard time letting go of what we have known in favor of grasping what is becoming and, indeed, shaping what is becoming. It is true at all levels of the Church’s leadership. It is true of bishops, dioceses, congregations, and individual members. It is true of the General Convention. It is true of us as a staff. It would be untruthful of me to tell you there was no element of risk in this adventure before us. In truth, I think there is a great deal of risk in it.

The very name of our organization, the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society is adventurous. Being a missionary is inherently adventurous. What we are setting out to become is a domestic and foreign missionary society in a much more fundamental way than a mere corporate name, in a much more adventurous way than we are currently doing, in a much more risky way than we have had to do before. I think the world’s salvation may be in that. I know ours is.

We as the staff of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society have the opportunity to lead that adventure, and I am determined that we will. Leadership is risky business as I have certainly found out in the last few days. It is dangerous. I have found that out, too. But the adventure is going to be a lot more fun, I promise you, than attempting to cling to an old way of doing ministry that no longer matters. We might be able to prop up the system we have for a few years more, but the new world God is creating is coming nevertheless. God’s word to us at this moment, I am absolutely convinced is, “Go for it.” For the truth is that we as the DFMS staff will either shape the future or have it shaped for us. And if it is shaped for us, it will then be imposed on us. We have before us the opportunity to shape our own future or stand passively by and let others do that for us. I just don’t think passivity is a very healthy spiritual position to be in. And, as you have heard me say, working for the Church ought not be a spiritually damaging experience. Whether it is or not is largely up to us.

This is where we now find ourselves. What are we going to take the opportunity to shape? Will be “go for it” or not? Will we lead or be led? Will we serve or hide? Will we be active or passive? What the Church needs from us right now is leadership. We have work to do.

So, here’s one other excerpt from my September address to you, then my new colleagues and now my trusted colleagues.

Here’s what really matters. Going for it is always better than not. Adventure is always better than safety. Safety, it seems to me, is at the root of a lot of boredom, a lot of status quo, a lot of disease, and a lot of stuck, but not much at the root of God. That is why it never ceases to amaze me that so much about religion is about playing it safe. Now what I’m about to say, I realize, may be heretical. This, you will come to realize, is not unusual. What is interesting to me is that the word safe is the noun form of the verb to save. Religion may be mostly about being safe. Faith, on the other hand, is not. Faith is about adventure. In truth it involves no small amount of risk. The risks can be material or spiritual, often both.

Being safe is, of course, one metaphor the Bible uses to describe the experience of God, but it is not the only one, and I don’t even think it is the main one. The main one is much more about risking and adventuring. Abraham and Sarah were called to leave their safety in Ur to seek an adventure in God’s promise of a new life. Moses is called to leave the safety of tending his father-in-law’s flocks into a very risky confrontation with Pharaoh. The Hebrew people were called to leave the safety of their lives in Egypt to seek the more difficult path of freedom. Amos was called to leave the safety of dressing sycamore trees to speak on behalf of justice. Jeremiah was called out of the safety of the womb to speak dangerous truth to power. Andrew, Peter, James, and John were called to leave the safety of what they were used to for the adventure of what they were not. I find myself a lot more interested in the adventuring than in the saving. In fact, I think adventure and being saved in the truest sense are actually the same thing.

All this has something to do with why the most prevalent angelic message in the Bible is this: Do not be afraid. It is what the angel told Mary when God had an adventure to propose to her. It is what the angels told the shepherds when suggesting they leave their flocks behind to go in search of something else. It is what the angels told the women who found the tomb empty on the first Easter. Like Mary and the shepherds and the woman at the tomb, it helps to be reminded of this basic message: Do not be afraid, or in other words, “Go for it.” Go for it because what is safe and secure is an illusion, and illusions are never of God. God is in the adventure.

When the people of God choose adventure, there will always be someone urging what is safe instead. Sometimes they will actually do everything they can to prevent the adventure. Safety is admittedly tempting. I just don’t see much evidence that God is much in it. It was the adventure of the Exodus that became the standard for the people of Israel. I’m not sure I can think of a time when Jesus ever chose to play it safe. None of the people we regard as saints were much about safety. “Fear not,” the angels always say, which of course doesn’t mean not to feel fear. It means not to be overcome by it.

Peace,

+Stacy

[Bumped For Obvious Reasons] Kendall Harmon—Crisis, Part 3: Iceberg - The Sacraments

Drowning mainstream media pull working people down with them

When I was a way younger man, I attained Red Cross lifeguard certification for pool duty at a church summer camp.  One aspect of the training was how to escape the grasp of a panicked swimmer.  In a worst case situation, you would let such a person go under rather than be drowned by them.

This came to mind as I read regional coverage of beef industry job loses due to the mainstream media’s “pink slime” panic:

Beef Products Inc. announced Monday that it will lay off an additional 86 workers at its Dakota Dunes headquarters and a South Sioux City, Neb., facility, citing what it calls a misinformation campaign about its beef product that critics dubbed “pink slime.”

BPI, which makes lean, finely textured beef, announced May 8 it will close three plants and lay off 650 employees later this month in Kansas, Texas and Iowa. The South Sioux City, Neb., plant will remain open, but operate at reduced capacity….

...BPI is one of the largest employers in the Sioux City tri-state region, and the jobs ranging from entry level to high-paying senior executive positions have a “profound impact on the community and local economy,” said Chris McGowan, president of the Siouxland Chamber of Commerce and Siouxland Initiative economic development organization.

These jobs are being taken under in the death grip of sensationalist reporting by ABC news.  Steadily sinking as a source of valued information, the MSM thrashes about with sensationalism and deception to hang on to some semblance of influence and to make money for its surviving practioners and the activist groups for which it fronts.  It does not seem to concern itself with the harm it inflicts.

“Pink slime” is just a goofy in house name coined by a United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) employee - but that very agency approved of the lean beef additive’s production process and inclusion in retail beef products.

The beef industry has a site intended to fight frenzy with facts, but this is not likely to save the hundreds of lost jobs.

His Grace Responds to the ASA

You will recall that a call was sent out across the land for inspiration for His Grace to respond to a rather specious complaint from the ASA.  You will be happy to learn that His Grace has responded to the ASA in a quite magnificient manner. 

His Grace thanks you for your email of 10th May, and for the attached bundle of pdfs and sundry other documents. Over the years he has endured some appalling persecution and had the most unpleasant encounters with smouldering faggots, so he begs your indulgence, compassion and understanding as you conduct your inquiry into the allegation that he is publishing/distributing images which some may find ‘offensive’ and/or ‘homophobic’.You asked him to keep the correspondence confidential, and he has done so. However, since he is constrained by no law from communicating with his advisers and legal counsellors, and there being no statutory upper limit on the number of those advisers and legal counsellors, he thought it appropriate to consult with his communicants (that is, his ecclesial blog community) because the Lord has been gracious to surround him with manifest and beneficial wisdom in abundance (along with a few nut-jobs). Some elements of your correspondence may therefore have been spread abroad (if not around the globe), which is regrettable but unavoidable.

Homosexuality - The Untold Story

From The Catholic Education Resource Center: 

Motorola actively promotes a similar agenda through mandatory “homophobia” workshops and homosexual sex-ed courses. One employee told author David Limbaugh that “this push is causing a great deal of tension among employees and the ‘quiet anger’ of some who disapprove of the homosexual lifestyle because of their religious beliefs.”

Episodes such as these are happening by the hundreds across America, every day of the week. According to medical, social science and especially legal experts, what is being called “diversity” is actually a dangerous new movement by a small group of activists to make the homosexual lifestyle appear as normal and healthy as the heterosexual lifestyle, even if that means deliberately hiding any information to the contrary.

“The media or major health organizations communicate none of the serious medical and psychiatric problems associated with homosexuality,” said Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons, a psychiatrist from West Conshohocken, who has practiced child and adult psychiatry for more than 20 years.

For instance, a 1997 Canadian study done in Vancouver shows the life span of gay men to be similar to what it was in 1871. The study estimates that one-half of all gay and bisexual men currently aged 20 will not reach their 65th birthday.

Two recent studies published in the American Medical Association Archives of General Psychiatry confirm the existence of a strong link between homosexuality and suicide, as well as other mental and emotional problems. Forty percent of people with same-sex attraction were sexually abused as children. Relationship violence is as high as 44 percent among gay men and 55 percent among lesbian couples.

“This is the truth that no one will speak,” said Fitzgibbons, “This is the truth that is not spoken in any of the diversity weeks they have in colleges or high schools. Students are made to think the homosexual lifestyle is exactly the same as the heterosexual lifestyle and all the major research coming out today shows that it’s not the same. ? But they are specifically choosing to ignore this research because the issue is political correctness, not science.”

Hat tip:  Anglican Mainstream

Henry Kissinger Gets the Full Monty from TSA

Since the TSA began their random sexual assault practices, I have dramatically enlarged my no fly zone which is what I call that area where it is easier to drive than fly.  I’m thinking Henry Kissinger is thinking the same thing.

Kissinger, who was in a wheelchair, was told by a TSA agent that he needed to be searched.

“He stood with his suit jacket off, and he was wearing suspenders,” freelance reporter Matthew Cole told the Post. “They gave him the full pat-down. None of the agents seemed to know who he was.” Cole added that Kissinger was given “the full Monty” search

Gotta love that TSA —Keeping us safe from Nobel Peace Prize Winner Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Gay Marriage: Obama for States Rights Before He Was Against Them

The grotesque display of political cynicism surrounding President Obama’s “evolution” to support of gay marriage reached a new low today as he called for repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). According to Fox News:

President Obama openly spoke of repealing the Defense of Marriage Act at a fundraiser Monday, as he defended his personal view that gay couples should have the right to marry.

While his administration has put out statements on the idea of repealing the 1996 federal law defining marriage as between a man and a woman, it’s unusual for Obama to call for its repeal.

He did so Monday as one of a list of policy goals for what he hopes will be a second term, along with passing the immigration legislation known as the Dream Act, reforming Wall Street and investing in schools.

“We have never gone wrong when we expanded rights and responsibilities to everybody,” Obama said. “That doesn’t weaken families, that strengthens families.”

The president was raising money before an audience of gay and lesbian supporters in New York, hosted by the LGBT Leadership Council and openly gay singer Ricky Martin, as well as Latino group The Futuro Fund. His comments at the fundraiser were his first to such an audience since he announced last week his personal support for gay marriage.

Why do I characterize this as “grotesque” and “cynical”? Try this:

The president stressed that this is a personal position, and that he still supports the concept of states’ deciding the issue on their own. But he said he’s confident that more Americans will grow comfortable with gays and lesbians getting married, citing his own daughters’ comfort with the concept.

What is the purpose of DOMA? To ensure that states may make their own decisions about same sex marriage. So the president, less than one week after stating that he wanted to preserve states’ ability to decide for themselves, turns around and says:

Of course, his Department of Justice has refused to support DOMA against court challenges to it for three years now. Not that the public is buying any of this:

Most Americans suspect that President Obama was motivated by politics, not policy, when he declared his support for same-sex marriage, according to a new poll released on Monday, suggesting that the unplanned way it was announced shaped public attitudes.

Sixty-seven percent of those surveyed by The New York Times and CBS News since the announcement said they thought that Mr. Obama had made it “mostly for political reasons,” while 24 percent said it was “mostly because he thinks it is right.” Independents were more likely to attribute it to politics, with nearly half of Democrats agreeing.

Remember the “bring out your dead” scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail? The old man keeps insisting he isn’t dead, and John Cleese turns to him and says, “you’re not fooling anyone, you know.” That’s what comes to mind every time the president speaks on this issue.

A Major New Find for Early Christianity

An unusual early Christian manuscript was offered for sale on the Istanbul flea market last week. Scholars identify the papyrus, which apparently survived in excellent condition after being hidden in what was once a summer palace in ancient Turkish Galatia, as shedding important light on the frustrations facing the campaign of the early Christian church to oppose all vestiges of paganism following the accession of the Emperor Constantine, and his decrees increasingly favoring Christians beginning in A.D. 313. The manuscript appears to be a letter from a former Christian church missionary in northern Galatia written to Archbishop Eudoxius of Constantinople in A.D. 360-61, just after that patriarch had assumed office.

The letter is surprisingly contemporary in tone, and uses different-colored inks and lettering to make its points in a style not seen before in early papyri. It reflects the considerable difficulties its author had encountered—particularly among younger people—in asking them to put aside their polytheistic and pagan ways and to become followers of Jesus Christ. Of significance is that it was written right about the time that Julian the Apostate assumed the emperorship on the death of Constantius II, in November 361. The latter, as a Christian, had issued several decrees against pagans, including closing their temples and banning sacrifices.  The former earned the title “Apostate” because he tried to take the Roman Empire back to paganism. The author of the manuscript seems to believe that strategies such as Constantius’ were harming the early Church, and favored moves such as those adopted by Julian upon his ascension. He (or she) also cites two anti-Christian polemics of the day by a certain Mercutius Leucippus, an author previously unknown to scholars.

A preliminary and unofficial translation, based on the work of author, scholar and speaker Rachel Held Evans, and using a typographical scheme to convey the different lettering styles, is as follows:

When we ask our audiences, after telling them we are followers of Jesus Christ the Messiah, what words or phrases best describe us, the most frequent response among the younger ones is that we are “anti-pagan.” For a staggering ten cities in a row, this was the first word that came to their mind when asked about the Christian faith. The same was true for eight out of ten people we met on the road. (The next most common negative images? : “judgmental,” “hypocritical,” and “too rigid.”)

In a book written against our teachings, titled unChristian, Mercutius Leucippus writes:

“The pagan issue has become the ‘causa maxima’, the negative image most likely to be intertwined with Christianity’s reputation. It is also the dimension that most clearly demonstrates the unchristian faith to young people today, surfacing in a spate of negative perceptions: judgmental, bigoted, sheltered, right-wingers, hypocritical, insincere, and uncaring. Outsiders say [Christian] hostility toward pagans…has become virtually synonymous with the Christian faith.”

Later inquiry, documented in Leucippus’ You Lost Me, reveals that one of the top reasons six out of ten of our recent converts have left the church is because they perceive the church to be too exclusive, particularly regarding their Apollo-worshipping friends.  Eight thousand twenty-somethings have left the church, and this is one reason why.

In my experience, all the anecdotal evidence backs up the surveys.

When I speak at academies, I often take time to talk to students in the cenatio.  When I ask them what issues are most important to them, they consistently report that they are frustrated by how the Church has treated their pagan Hellenistic friends.  Some of these students would say they most identify with what groups like the Jesus-Jupiter Network term “Side A” (they believe pagan temples and ceremonies have the same value as Christian churches and liturgies in the sight of God). Others better identify with “Side B” (they believe the Holy Eucharist is God’s eventual intent—but only after many years of patient and brotherly dialogue—for pagans and Christians alike).  But every single student I have spoken with believes that the Church has mishandled its response to paganism.

Most have close Latin- and Greek-speaking friends.

Most feel that the Church’s response to pagansm is partly responsible for high rates of depression and suicide among their Greek and Roman friends, particularly those who are both multilingual and Christian.

Most are highly suspicious of ministries that encourage men and women with pagan attractions to marry fully practicing Christians in spite of their feelings.
Most feel that the church is complicit, at least at some level, in anti-pagan bullying.

And most…I daresay all...have expressed to me passionate opposition to legislative action against polytheism, such as that first introduced by the Emperor Constantine.

“When apostolicals turn their anti-pagan sentiments into a political campaign,” one college senior on her way to the Vestal Virgins school told me, “all it does is confirm to my Latin-speaking friends that they will never be welcome in the church. It makes them bitter, and it makes me mad too.  This is why I never refer to myself as a Christian, except as necessary to get an imperial scholarship. The whole central idea—that Christ was nailed as a criminal on a tree for everyone’s so-called sins—is a huge stumbling block to anyone’s acceptance of it. Ugh. I’m embarrassed to be part of that group.”
I [the author] can relate.

When Bythnia’s ruler amended his previous decrees by banning pagan-Christian marriage (even though it was already illegal under Roman law), members of my church at the time put signs in the agora declaring support for the initiative. From my perspective, the message this sent to the entire community was simple: EVERYONE BUT PAGANS WELCOME.

Marcus and I left the church soon afterwards.

Which brings me to North Galatia and Decretus Unum.
Despite the fact that in North Galatia, as in all Roman provinces, the law since Constantius Secundus has stated that marriage in the eyes of state is only between a Christian man and a Christian woman (since churches will not marry pagans), a proposal permanently to ban mixed (pagan-Christian) marriage in the region’s churches was put to the plebiscite. The decree doesn’t appear to change anything on a practical level (though some are saying it may have unintended negative consequences on Christian relationships), but seems to serve primarily as an ideological statement

....an expensive, destructive, and impractical ideological statement.

Freemen in North Galatia—who you would think would be more opposed to tampering with religious laws—supported the proposal, and last week it passed. Religious leaders led the charge in support of the amendment, with 93-year-old Gulielmus Grammicus taking out multiple inscriptions supporting the proposal in fora across the state.

As I cast my urim and thummim last night in the caupona, the reaction among my friends fell into an imperfect but highly predictable pattern. Christians over 40 were celebrating. Christians under 40 were mourning.  Reading through the comments, the same thought kept returning to my mind as occurred to me when I first saw that Gulielmus Grammicus inscription: You’re losing us.

I’ve said it a hundred times, and I’ll say it again…(though I’m starting to think that no one is listening):

My generation is tired of the Christian-pagan culture wars.

We are tired of fighting, tired of vain efforts to advance the Kingdom through politics and power, tired of drawing lines in the sand, tired of being known for what we are against, not what we are for.

And when it comes to paganism, we no longer think in the black-and-white categories of the generations before ours. We know too many wonderful people from the Greek and Latin communities to consider polytheism a mere “issue.” These are people, and they are our friends. When they tell us that something hurts them, we listen. And Decretus Unum hurts like hell.

Regardless of whether you identify most with Side A or Side B (or with one of the many variations within those two broad categories), it should be clear that proposals like these needlessly offend Greeks and Romans, damage the reputation of Christians, and further alienate young adults—both Christians and pagan—from the Church.

So my question for those apostolicals leading the charge in the culture wars is this: Is it worth it?

Is a political “victory” really worth losing hordes of more young people to cynicism regarding the Church?

Is a political “victory” worth further alienating people who identify as pagan?

Is a political “victory” worth perpetuating the idea that apostolical Christians are at war with Jupiter- and Juno-worshippers?

And is a political “victory” worth drowning out that quiet but persistent internal voice that asks—what if we get this wrong?
Too many Christian leaders seem to think the answer to that question is “yes,” and it’s costing them. 

Because young Christians are ready for peace.

We are ready to start washing feet instead of waging war.

And if we cannot find that sort of peace within the Church, I fear we will look for it elsewhere.

* * *
[End of unofficial translation.] There is no indication of whether Eudoxius ever replied to this letter—shortly after it was written, his main problem became disagreements over Arianism. Indeed, the location where it was found—upper Galatia, which is not known to have been visited by Eudoxius—may be an indication that, for whatever reason, the letter was never sent.

* * *
Addendum (by popular request): The foregoing piece is satire, not historical (or even present) fact. The piece it satirizes may be read at the link for the “author, scholar and speaker” mentioned in the Introduction. That paroxysm of self-indulgent whining immediately suggested the theme to me: what if such a whiner had existed at the time that Christianity was struggling to deal with the paganism that was rampant all around it? Could there be a parallel with the same emotional reactions urged today as reasons the Church should jettison the authority of Scripture? And lo and behold—you have what is above, which has been fashioned using 95% of the words of the original rant, with the other 5% altered to put the “letter” seemingly in its historic context. If you got to the end thinking it was all real, don’t blame yourself, and don’t blame me: the responsibility is all on those who try to make us feel guilty for submitting to the authority of Scripture. Use the degree to which the piece may have “fooled” you as a spur to resolve to be firmer, in the future, with such emotional tugs at your conscience. In that way you will follow honorably in the footsteps of your fourth- and fifth-century Christian forbears, who held the line (mostly) against the relaxations of Scripture’s authority which the forces of paganism urged upon them. 

Times are Tough All Over

Times are tough all over. Who can be expected to live on 67% in salary increases and $600,000 (last year alone) for travel and expenses? 

First-class travel. Six-figure salaries for half the 132 officers and staffers. Plenty of plum jobs for family members.
Life is good at the top of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths, Forgers and Helpers.
The union, with its headquarters in Kansas City, Kan., represents about 59,000 workers in the U.S. and Canada who make and repair boilers, fit pipes and work on ships and power plants. The recession has hit their trade hard, reducing union membership.
At the same time, the president’s salary has surged 67 percent in the past six years, not counting a recent raise. Add in travel and some other expenses, and Newton B. Jones received more than $600,000 last year, putting him at the absolute top of the presidents of the dozen biggest unions in the country.

[Bumped For Obvious Reasons] Kendall Harmon—Crisis, Part 2: The Iceberg (Introduction)

Gaylo

Friends, behold America’s newest secular saint:

If I didn’t know better, I’d say Newsweek is a subsidiary of the Romney-for-President campaign.

Hollow Gains in Los Angeles

This story broke late Thursday in the Los Angeles Times: “Episcopal Church is rightful owner of properties, court rules”. The story conveys little more than that that an Orange County judge granted summary judgment in favor of the Diocese of Los Angeles and ECUSA against St. David’s Anglican parish, in North Hollywood, and against All Saints Anglican parish in Long Beach.

These two cases were part of an original three which the Diocese of Los Angeles brought in 2004—the third was against St. James Parish of Newport Beach. Because of their similarities, all of them were coordinated under a single judge in Orange County Superior Court. The other two had originally trailed the St. James case while it went up twice to the California Supreme Court, but apparently no longer. The latter case has still to be resolved, while now summary judgments have been entered in the two other Diocese of Los Angeles lawsuits over church properties.

There is a complicating issue involved in the St. James case—one that doubtless prevented it, too, from falling to a judge’s gavel on summary judgment. And that is the issue of waiver. For when St. James planned to add to its facilities, and had secured a substantial donation to enable purchase of the property and construction on it, the donor insisted that St. James first obtain from the Diocese a waiver of the Dennis Canon. That waiver, signed by then-Canon to the Ordinary (and “Attorney-in-Fact” for the Bishop) D. Bruce MacPherson, was duly delivered (see Exhibit A, at p. 11), and the donor made good on his promise.

I was troubled by these paragraphs in the article:

In filing its motion for summary judgment in the cases involving St. David’s and All Saints, the Episcopal Church contended that a ruling should be issued based on the 2009 Supreme Court decision, said John Shiner, lead counsel for the diocese.

“I was very pleased with the ruling today,” Shiner said. “The court followed the precedent set by the California Supreme Court and other appellate decisions, which we have always felt are relevant to our current disputes.”

The ruling by the California Supreme Court to which Mr. Shiner refers was a ruling on St. James’ demurrer to ECUSA’s complaint against that parish. The courts are required on a demurrer (a defendant’s challenge to the legal adequacy of a complaint) to regard all allegations in the complaint as literally true—but only for purposes of determining if the complaint states a claim which a court may redress. If the complaint is found adequate, the defendant then answers it by denying its key allegations, and the parties are left to their proofs, according to their respective evidence. The one who carries the burden of proof as to conflicting evidence is the one who wins—in a civil case.

Thus the California Supreme Court’s ruling in 2009 was not a ruling based on facts found after a contested trial. It was a ruling which took the allegations of ECUSA’s complaint (including what it alleged about its Dennis Canon) as having been established, for purposes only of the demurrer. Thus its holding said, in effect, “If the plaintiff ECUSA can prove that all its allegations are true, then California law would say that it becomes the owner of the parish property when the latter leaves its jurisdiction.”

For ECUSA and the Diocese of Los Angeles to have been granted summary judgment against St. David’s and All Saints, it must have established to the court’s satisfaction that there were no disputed facts in either of those cases which required a trial. The court instead could decide the case right now, based only on the undisputed facts. (And indeed: I found out later that both sides had moved for summary judgment. This meant, to the Court at least, that both parties essentially agreed that there was no need for any trial to resolve any disputes over the facts of record.)

From the Diocese’s point of view, those “undisputed facts” included, of course, the so-called “hierarchical” nature of ECUSA, as a matter of law, etc., etc.  Once ECUSA is deemed “hierarchical” as a matter of law (i.e., no factual proof to the contrary will be allowed), then its ability, as such a church, to impose trusts unilaterally on all of its parishes’ individual properties follows. All it has to do is enact a canon declaring that such a trust exists forthwith (the Dennis Canon).

If that was the basis on which the court granted summary judgment to ECUSA and the Diocese, then we have presented, for purposes of an appeal from the decision, exactly the same grounds raised in the current petitions pending before the United States Supreme Court. That Court is expected to indicate by the end of June whether or not it will grant those petitions—in order to decide whether state courts may extend to a national church such as ECUSA, without violating the First Amendment, the ability to bypass, and be exempt from, state-law requirements for the establishment of a trust when it does not itself own the property being “placed” in a trust. The affected parishes should be praying that the Supreme Court will finally see good reason to halt this madness of allowing a single type of arbitrarily abusive church to confiscate—just because the courts say it can, solely for purposes of punishment, and for no other purpose that it factually demonstrates—a property which a local parish has acquired, paid for, developed and maintained all on its own.

After making further inquiries, I found that the court’s understanding of these cases was even worse than the bare newspaper account reflects. The arguments before Judge Kim Dunning, assigned to the cases from the Complex Civil Panel in Orange County, carried over from Wednesday afternoon to Thursday morning. Judge Dunning apparently announced at the start of the arguments that she regarded the nature of the Episcopal Church (USA) not open to question in her court, because it had already been decided (but on demurrer!) by the California Supreme Court, and any further inquiry would involve the court in questions of ecclesiastical governance and polity to a degree that was impermissible under the First Amendment. And with that announcement, all the rest of her conclusions were foregone conclusions, and the cases were over. She held that the passage of the Dennis Canon could not be questioned, or raise any disputed issue of fact; and she regarded the Episcopal Church (USA)—even though she refused to allow evidence as to its nature—as “a superior religious body or general church” for purposes of applying Corp. Code section 9142 (c), which allows such churches, but no others, to impose trusts on parish properties by including such a provision in their governing documents.

Thus her ruling granting the motions for summary judgment by the Diocese of Los Angeles was verbal, at the end of the arguments; it will be reduced to writing by counsel, and if all agree on its form, then it will be submitted to the judge for her signature. At that point, the losing parishes may file their notices of appeal.

It will be almost mandatory to appeal such a one-sided ruling that so ignores the law of “neutral principles” to decide disputes over church property. It is anything but neutral to foreclose all inquiry into just how a church might be regarded as “hierarchical” or not. And it is error, plain and simple, to read a higher court’s ruling on a demurrer as foreclosing all factual inquiries into matters which were simply alleged in a complaint, and which the higher court was thus required to deem as incontrovertible.

Chalk up Judge Dunning as yet one more judge who is unqualified to preside over a church property case, because she does not, or deliberately will not, understand how the law applies to such a case. But as I have observed elsewhere, such judicial obtuseness over religious questions is becoming more and more par for the course, because so few law school graduates ever acquire any familiarity with canon law in their practices. (That still does not excuse their abysmal inability to apply and follow precedent.) The unfortunate result is to make the road easy for religious bullies like the Diocese of Los Angeles and the Episcopal Church (USA).

Sunday Worship - May 13, 2012

Sunday Worship

Sunday, May 6, 2012

WORSHIP

The bells of St George’s Church, Poynton in Cheshire - BBC Radio 4

Choral Evensong from Truro Cathedral - BBC Radio 3

Sunday Worship from St Bartholomew’s Church Stranmillis, Belfast - BBC Radio 4

Choral services from the chapel of St John’s College Cambridge and New College, Oxford

SERMONS AND TALKS

All Souls, Langham Place their 3,500 sermon searchable archive

St. James the Less, Pimlico

Cathedral Church of the Advent, Birmingham Alabama

Tim Keller Interview - Evangelical Alliance - Part 1 - Part 2

This is Jesus - Tim Keller and Mike Cain - Mission talks from The Oxford Inter-Collegiate Christian Union in February Audio - Video (mostly in reverse order)

This is Jesus - four talks by Vaughan Roberts following on from #7 - St Ebbs, Oxford audio

Good news when you are out of your depth (Luke 7:1-17)

Good news when you are confronted by death (Luke 7:11-17)

Good news when you are looking for answers (Luke 7:18-35)

Good news when you’re stricken with guilt (Luke 7:36-50)

The Spirit Prays for Us - Rev. John Yates II - The Falls Church audio and text [Romans 8:26-27]

Running the Race: Pray to be open to God from Ascension to Pentecost with the Diocese of Sheffield [17- 27 May]

Leaflet and daily prayer and reading guide

Guide to daily readings for prayer

Planning for prayer and a special prayer to use every day

More resources for prayer

Rethinking Life after Death - Bishop Tom Wright - Inner Compass Youtube Video

PRAYER

Prayer - Please pray for the church in Sudan, Iran, Burma, the 4,000 Falls Church, Virginia congregants about to be expelled from their church this week, the persecuted church and for Rennis Ponniah newly elected to be Bishop of Singapore.

Topical Prayers - Church of England [including a prayer for various countries]

Prayer for the persecuted church - Church of England

Easter Prayers and Devotionals - Lent and Beyond Prayersite

News for Prayer

South Sudan: Call for prayer for peace in Sudan and South Sudan - Christian Today

UN outrage at Sudan bombing - BBC

Archbishop’s message to the Episcopal and Catholic Bishops of South Sudan - ABC site

Iran:

A letter from Pastor Nadarkhani - ACLJ

Foreign Office Minister concerned at sentencing of Iranian lawyer - FCO

CSW Report

Burma: Burma army intensifies attacks in Kachin State despite reforms - CSW

Virginia: Falls Church Press Release

Congregation of The Falls Church must begin again - Washington Post

Persecution: Compass Direct Report

Singapore: New bishop for Anglicans here - Rev Rennis Ponniah - Straits Times

Rennis Ponniah Appointed 9th Anglican Bishop of Singapore - Christian Post

CURRENT AFFAIRS

Sunday Program - current affairs with Samira Ahmed - BBC Radio 4 - available from 07:10 am BST Sunday

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Looking beyond the bunting - Mark Russell - CEN

Stress Management - Suzie Kearley - CEN

Church must educate young people in leadership - Christianity Today

Yosemite: Range of Light - Shawn Reeder Vimeo [click ‘HD’ if slow loading]

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Genesis

Friday Morning

When the ship comes in

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OPEN THREAD: For What Character Traits or Actions of your Mother Are You Thankful?

I always enjoy these Mother’s Day threads, both hearing from others and thinking through the things I’ve noticed about my own Mother over the past year. So I’m looking forward to your own lists.

As for my own list:

—I’m a single person and over the last year have become more conscious of Mother’s excellence as an “administrator.” Her skills in running the household and everybody’s lives [er, that latter may not have come out right but you know what I mean] meant that my Dad was released to go work hard like a mule every day!  Again, maybe that doesn’t sound quite right, but let me explain.

I have a growing consulting business and focus fairly intensely on my clients and their business growth. Just this week, I staggered into the house after a full day elsewhere in South Carolina, some time around midnight. Once I got home, there was a mass of duties to attend to. I got to bed around 2ish. Mother didn’t work outside of the home other than a couple of early years. But boy did she work. The house and all surrounding entities ran like a clock. Meals, laundry, scads of errands, many of them complex, yard work, household repairs, car repairs, bill paying, vendor management, cleaning, and not to mention raising and home schooling four children—all were accomplished with a smoothness that I marvel at.  That’s not to say that she didn’t go crazy at times.

But my Mother “put her shoulder into it” and still does. As a result, my Dad essentially has to deal with practically nothing at all in regards to managing a household and material goods—something that I’m a bit envious of, I have to admit.

I really appreciate, the older I get, the partnership that she and Dad have—and I largely give credit to Mother for that.

—All of the above being said, my Mother has always been a hard worker. It was a fantastic example for all of us as we grew up. The very least you can do is work hard.

—Mother has never stopped reading or learning. She reads more than I do, and has many different books by her bedside, on the kitchen table, and elsewhere throughout the house, lying ready and handy. Every year as I was growing up, she would take us to the store for our school things—big fat brightly colored pencils when we were younger, notebooks, lunch boxes, erasers, and so on. It was a big deal, and was a part of the long and very good tradition of establishing many rituals that gave value to learning. Mother was always very excited for us about the great privilege we had in learning. I hope I keep that for the rest of my life.

—I was talking to Mother earlier in the week about my Grandmother, and commented that the three things that gave me a love for and skill at language were: my parents reading incessantly to us all [they still do, when we visit or when we call—always something they want to read to us whether we want to hear it or not!], my Grandmother extensively training me in the fine art of diagramming complex, lengthy sentences [it was a game or a puzzle for us], and my Mother teaching me four years of Latin. Those things . . . they were invaluable to my ability to “handle” the English language.

Happy Mother’s Day, everyone!

A New Bishop for Singapore

The Christian Post in Singapore are reporting that the Diocese of Singapore has elected Rennis Ponniah as it’s 9th bishop.

The Assistant Bishop in the Anglican Church in Singapore, the Right Reverend Rennis Ponniah has been appointed the Ninth Bishop of the Diocese of Singapore, the Archbishop of South East Asia, the Most Revd. Bolly Lapok announced today.

A Special Synod had met March this year to nominate candidates. The final selection was made by the House of Bishops at the Provincial level. The installation service will take place sometime in October this year.

Bishop-Designate Ponniah, 56, will succeed the incumbent, the Rt. Revd. Dr. John Chew, who will be retiring October this year when he turns 65 in accordance with a constitutional constitutional age limit on holders of the office of the Bishop of Singapore. Bishop Dr. Chew will remain in office until October 4, 2012.

The outgoing Bishop has held the office for twelve years since his consecration and enthronement in April 25, 2000. The Rt. Revd. Ponniah will become the fourth Asian holder of the office.

As incoming Bishop, Ponniah is set to become the head of the 20,000-strong, influential mainline denomination.

On his election, the Bishop-Designate said: “With faith in God, I receive this immense responsibility. I am humbled by the trust invested in me by the clergy, the laity and the provincial bishops.

“I intend to build on the good work of Bishop John Chew and his predecessors, while seeking fresh ways to bring the love and hope of the ‘good news’ of our faith to a multi-religious and constantly-changing society in a responsible and winsome way.”

...

The Rt. Revd. Ponniah, who is married to Amir with four children, is regarded as one of the most well-known Bible teachers in the Anglican world.

He led the daily Bible study sessions at the fourth Global South Encounter held April 2010 in Singapore. Come June, he will be leading morning Bible study sessions at the 2012 Assembly of the Anglican Church in North America.

That means friends in the States will get to meet him shortly - the ACNA Assembly is in June.

A tangentially Mother’s Dayish comment or something

The culture just gets creepier by the day.

Just caught this scary news about the Democrats’ “Julia” site.

Basically, there’s an illustrated site about a composite woman (not the one the President used to date) named “Julia.”  At key moments in her very personal, individual life, the government is there - and if you elect Romney and the Republicans, Commissar Charming might not be available to ride to Julia’s constant need for rescue.

She never marries, but chooses to have a kid - and she can, thanks to the Democrats’ programs.

She sends the kid to school (provided by Democrats - I guess the GOP iz for stoopids, after all), and then the kid drops out of her story.

With all the roller coaster riding that marriage and child raising entails, I’m glad I have a wife and mom with whom to share it all.  She is a blessing.  God’s plan makes beautiful sense, and one of its biggest benefits is the constant need to outgrow me, myself and I and really love another person and the people we brought into the world.

Doesn’t mean that government programs haven’t helped, especially where our autistic kid is concerned.  I give thanks for public employees and resources every day - I’d be an ingrate and delusional not to.

But the craziness of the Democrats, just like their chaplains in Liberal Protestant churches like TEC, is that the more they blather about “social justice,” the more factionalized, tribalized and even radically individualized they seek to make us.  They wind up saying, “It’s all about me, myself and I - the rest of you just send the check and get out of my face.”  It’s not a lofty vision, it’s a cave to the fallen nature of humanity. 

Some of you know that I’ve written stuff critical of usurious lenders, junk paper Wall Street whiz kids and others who pile up money by keeping their neighbors in debt.  It isn’t easy or a reflex for me to vote for the Republicans - the stereotype that they cover for greedy jerks has some truth in it.  But I just can’t vote for this crazy-off-the-deep-end Democratic administration, be it the flesh and blood extremists and elitists that hang at the White House or their composite characters like Julia. 

President Obama frequently drops “autistic kids” into his litanies of those the government is here to save.  Wanna know something?  The biggest help - the biggest blessing - that our autistic kid has is his married mom and dad, two very different and sometimes conflicted people working tag-team to love and care for him.  (OK, just like pro wrestling, sometimes we cheat and jump into the ring at the same time).  That’s not what sentiment or ego tells me - it’s come right out of the mouths of the medical specialists who I work a second job to afford for the kid.

Mr. President and friends, don’t tell me I’m an irrelevant intrusion into your grand programmatic design and expect me to vote for you.  You all can go draw your cartoon people and make them do whatever you want - I promise not to bug you.  But I don’t want to pay for your hobby and I won’t vote for you or those who do.

I’m glad my wife chose crazy life with me instead of the subsidized banality of The Movement or whatever it is grunting and wallowing there in DC. 

Happy Mother’s Day, Melissa and all real moms. 

A religion geek hearts The Avengers

Caught The Avengers last night.  It was a blast and I had fun with it on several levels.  OK, let’s get it out of the way, Scarlett Johanssen in 3D was one.  Another was Samuel L. Jackson - looks like Jules found that redemptive path after all (but still got to shoot folks in the process).  God gives us more than we can ask or imagine, says the Book of Common Prayer.

But for a religion geek, there were many more enjoyments (CONTAINS SPOILERS):

Props to truth, monotheism, exclusivism, the scandal of particularity and other theological stuff that Christians love and others despise.  When Captain America is warned to stay out of the fight between Thor and Loki, because “they are gods,” he retorts, “There’s only one God, ma’am, and I don’t think he dresses like that.”  A number of friends have commented on that line.  There’s a stunned hush that falls over the audience - you sense people ready to burst out in applause but the movie moves fast and there isn’t time to jump in if you dawdle.  But you see the shadowy heads in the audience leaning toward one another to comment on it.  Great line.  How did that get into a 2012 movie?

A metaphor for the church.  The superheroes are divided by egos and personal agendas.  Only when they recognize each individual’s special power, and unify those powers in a common effort, do they overthrow evil.  Jesus’ sign of “the vine and the branches” and Paul’s “parts of one body” express the church as a collection of individuals, all gifted by God for unified work for the Gospel.  No need to thank me for this post-it in your collection of sermon illustrations.

Evil is manipulative but ultimately powerless. Loki is most effective when he plays on the heroes’ egos, shames and fears.  He has some mind control ability, but it is rather easily undone, as Black Widow points out, by hitting the controlled person upside the head.  When the Avengers recognize what he’s up to, his plan begins to come apart.  And when Loki draws himself up to full height and delivers an oration about how he is a god and far superior to his opponents, the Hulk thrashes him and stomps off muttering, “Puny god.”  The Bible reveals the devil as a deceiver.  His power is in sales and marketing.  So the New Testament tells us, “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7 ESV).

Seeking redemption. Black Widow is a former assassin for hire.  She keeps talking about “wiping the red off of my ledger.”  Now, before my elder SF bloggers Kennedy and Ould fly in to Calvinistically remind us, the Christian message is that Jesus Christ redeemed us by his blood - the “red on his ledger” is the only way to wipe our ledger clean.  “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross” (Colossians 2:13-14 ESV).  Black Widow does not have a conversion of that nature, but she starts to understand that constantly looking to the past as a balance sheet is fruitless.  When Hawkeye is rescued from Loki’s mind control, and comes to the horrified realization that he has been killing people for Loki, it is Black Widow who is able to warn him of the futility of going back over and over our shame and failure - redemption requires a true release.  Christians understand that Christ’s sacrifice is the only redemption of our lives.  But we also recognize that we are transformed in this life, turning from what we were into what God makes us to be. 

Tradition. Captain America is a throwback to the moral certainties of the Second World War.  When the Cap’n's world view is questioned, Nick Fury opines that the messed up world needs such old school virtue.  The movie suggests that our post-modern, high tech reality has failed to make us better as a race - Loki mocks the way that humans continue to kill one another in big bunches.  The Avengers encourage us to look back for values that subdue ego and invest life in caring for the common good.

As you’ve probably heard, the movie is chock full of action and humor, too.  I encourage you to take your eyes of faith along with your 3D glasses.  At the very least you’ll have fun, and you might come home with something more to remember.

Al Mohler on the President’s “Evolution”

The Rev. Dr. Al Mohler on the President’s “evolving” position on same sex “marriage”

Honesty is the best policy, and the President has now made his position clear. He is again for what he was until today against, but that was only after he was for it before. The American people will have to unravel that as an issue of character. He is hardly the first politician to find himself holding to an “evolving” position on an issue of fundamental importance. Most politicians, however, do their best to avoid the kind of situation in which the President found himself on this issue.

In any event, the fact remains that the President of the United States has now put himself publicly on the line for the radical redefinition of marriage, subverting society’s most central institution.

This is a sad day for America, but the President’s statement was not a surprise. Given the political context he faced, the only question was when the President would make his public statement of endorsement for the legalization of same-sex marriage. We now know the answer to that question…more

Same Bible, Different Verdict

NPR has an interesting article on the two very different Christian views that seek to use the same authority.  That’s probably not a fair word to use since the left gives their bible little to no authority.  What with all that evolving and conforming to the culture, it’s hard to have many authoritarian positions. 

It’s true, says Carmen Fowler LaBerge: You can be a Christian and support same-sex marriage, but, she says, “nobody can say gay marriage is biblical. That’s just foolishness.”

LaBerge resigned her post as minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) after the denomination voted last year to ordain noncelibate gay clergy. She says the Bible is clear.

“From the Old Testament and throughout the New Testament, the only sexual relationships that are affirmed in scripture are those in the context of marriage between one man and one woman,” she says.

Actually, the Old Testament does condone polygamy. Still, LaBerge says, from Leviticus to Paul’s writings in Romans and First Corinthians, homosexual acts are called vile and detestable, and legalizing same-sex relationships does not change the sin.

Not so fast, says the Rev. Susan Russell, an Episcopal priest at All Saints Church in Pasadena, Calif. She takes her cues from Jesus.

“Jesus never said a single word about anything even remotely connected to homosexuality,” she says.

Nothing.  Nada.  Well, maybe sometimes, like in this pesky little section:

“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’?  So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

Here is an interview of Rev. Russell where she talks about the conservatives in the church. 

I think what it demonstrates is there is a small percentage of the radical conservative fringe for whom nothing but capitulation to their perspective is going to be enough and one of my questions to the church is how long are we going to continue hold our gospel imperative hostage to that kind of blackmail and bullying.

  Yes, the GLBT gospel imperative is quite evident in that interview, don’t you think?

Isn’t it comforting to know the GLBT lobby will never use that bullying and blackmail stuff?

If you are a poll junkie, here’s the latest on the gay marriage thing. 

Roman Catholics Launch Australian Ordinariate

From the Catholic News Agency:

Vatican City, May 11, 2012 / 04:45 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Benedict XVI will continue the expansion of the new Catholic Church structure created for former Anglicans by launching an ordinariate for Australia on June 15.

“I am confident that those former Anglicans who have made a journey in faith that has led them to the Catholic Church will find a ready welcome,” said Archbishop Denis Hart of Melbourne, who serves as president of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference.

Australia’s Anglican ordinariate will be called the Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross, under the patronage of St. Augustine of Canterbury. It will have the status of a diocese.

The ordinariate is intended for Anglicans and former Anglicans who wish to enter full communion with the Catholic Church while retaining some of their customs and liturgical traditions.

The Australian bishops have put in place procedures to help Anglican clergy and laity join the Catholic Church through the ordinariate, the bishops said May 11.

The ordinariate for England and Wales launched in 2011, while the U.S. ordinariate launched on January 1, 2012.

In England and Wales there are at least 40 ordinariate groups with 60 priests, the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham magazine The Portal reports. Several of its members are former Anglican bishops.

As of January, 1,400 individuals from 22 communities have expressed interest in joining, the U.S. ordinariate. About 60 current or former Anglican priests are preparing to be ordained Catholic priests for it, according to the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter.

The U.S. ordinariate will open its first parish in Scranton, Pa. this August.

Did you catch one line?

Australia’s Anglican ordinariate will be called the Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross, under the patronage of St. Augustine of Canterbury.

Talk about sticking the knife in.

A Call to Pens

Wherever shall we begin?  His Grace is being required to respond to a complaint filed by some anti-traditional marriage supporters in the UK.  Evidently there are at least 24 such individuals,10 of whom are quite ruffled, across the pond. 

The complaint demands that His Grace explain why an advertisement claiming statistics with which the complainers disagree, is not offensive and homophobic.  Let me review – they are not interested in receiving further information on the statistics.  They want to know why the advertisement should not be considered offensive and homophobic.

No, really.  That’s what it states. 

The ‘Issue’ here is that 24 anonymous complainants, ‘including the Jewish Gay & Lesbian Group’ (doubtless disclosed to give weight to the allegations), challenged whether the claim ‘70% of people say keep marriage as it is’. However, His Grace is not required to respond to that point, since he did not conduct the research. But it transpires that 10 of these 24 complainants objected that the ads were ‘offensive’ and ‘homophobic’, and he is requested to respond to these allegations ‘under CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1 and 3.3 (Misleading advertising), 3.7 (Substantiation) and 4.1 (Harm and offence)’.

Of course, His Grace is given the option to send the complaint to another party, but we are in agreement that bothering the long dead archbishop would be wrong. 

There is much to be considered here.  How much of His Grace’s time should be allotted to this task?  Should the task be shuffled off to buffalo as we say here in the states?  Allotted to the cyberspace version of a round file?  We think not.

Having considered all the facts including the vast positive and enlightening aspects of His Grace’s blog and the serious deficit this will potentially cause in his blog posting due to the time required to compose a response to this agency on behalf of the ten very indignant anonymous persons, we think it is incumbent upon us to assist him with a response. 

Accordingly, we cordially invite you to pen your most gracious response in the comment section below and, hopefully, we can assist with lifting this administrative burden from His Grace’s shoulders. 

Gay Marriage: Evangelical Liberals Hit Hardest

The Rev. Joel Hunter, pastor of an evangelical mega-church in Florida and a key backer of President Obama on the evangelical left, had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day Wednesday when his political soulmate pulled the rug out from under him. According to the Washington Post:

President Obama called the Rev. Joel Hunter, one of his spiritual advisers, shortly after he wrapped up his interview with ABC’s Robin Roberts in which he affirmed his support for same-sex marriage.

The president and the pastor spoke for 15 minutes, as Hunter, who had been driving with his wife in their home town of Orlando, Fla., pulled into a parking lot to listen. The pastor said he told the president that he did not agree with his view.

Here’s another tidbit from our interview with Hunter: Obama expressed concern that his full embrace of gay marriage was now putting the evangelical mega-church leader in an uncomfortable spot.

“We have a close relationship,” Hunter told The Post. “And he wanted to make sure that I wasn’t in a really precarious position by not knowing what he had done, and he wanted to make sure our relationship was solid.”

Hunter assured the president that the relationship was fine.

“Of course it is,” Hunter said. “A pastor doesn’t abandon people because he happens to disagree with the decisions that they’ve made.”

Still, Hunter was not pleased. Upon answering his phone when a Post reporter called, Hunter sounded exasperated. “I’ve had better days,” he groaned.

Heh.  Reminds me of the story of the scorpion and the frog.

The pastor went on to explain that, from his church’s perspective, even a symbolic gesture by the president (Obama made clear he was not pursuing a policy shift and was expressing personal views) could foreshadow future laws that could force religious institutions’ hands.

His fears were not soothed by assurances from Obama and the White House that the president’s view would have no bearing on churches or religious groups. Obama said that these organizations should make their own decisions on whether to marry same-sex couples. In their conversation, Hunter said Obama referred to his belief in “civil marriage” for gays and lesbians, drawing a distinction between relationships sanctioned by the government and those by churches.

“If there is a law that you cannot discriminate between same-sex couples and heterosexual couples, then, eventually, there will be pressure on the church to obey the law,” Hunter said. “And there will be lawsuits that come testing this thing, and we just know that we will certainly be pressured to conform to the law.”

Hunter continued: “As we see this possibly getting written into the Democratic Party platform, we look down the road. And the conversation I hear among religious leaders is that when you have this kind of powerful voice in the government and even an entire party talking about marriage non-discrimination, then there will be laws put in place somewhere down the line.”

Duh. Some of us out here, who have not been blinded by the light streaming from The One’s halo, have been saying this for years. Nice to know that Hunter has finally woken up to find out what he’s bought into. Nor will he be the last. Of course, some will insist that the scales never fall from their eyes. Take Sojourners, for instance:

Sojourners supports equal protection under the law and full legal rights for all people regardless of sexual orientation. We affirm the right of faith communities, congregations, and religious organizations to define marriage in accordance with their own traditions and interpretation of Scripture.

We hope that the president will work to find common ground with those who do not agree with his position on same-sex marriage and believe that open, respectful, and civil discourse on these issues is very important. For all of us, our relationships with friends and family, and our faith convictions will influence our views on these matters. We believe the best path forward is a legal system that respects the rights and responsibilities of all couples, gay or straight, and also respects the religious liberty of faith communities to define marriage consistent with their theology and scriptural understanding.

Some people will never learn.

A Statement from The Falls Church

This is a solid statement that is both gracious toward the legal victors and firm in its reaffirmation of biblical authority and orthodoxy

FALLS CHURCH, Va. (May 10, 2012) - As the result of recent court action, The Falls Church Anglican, a congregation of 4,000 worshippers in Falls Church, Va., will soon move out of its historic home as it continues its ministry. Some in the congregation have worshipped on the church campus for more than 60 years, with the original property dating back almost 300 years. While the cost of leaving the property is great, members of The Falls Church Anglican are celebrating as they stand on their orthodox faith and continue to spread the transforming love of Jesus Christ beyond the church walls.

The Falls Church Anglican is being forced to leave its long-time home on May 15 as the result of a judicial ruling rejecting its request for a suspension (authorization to remain on its property during an appeal) of the January 2012 decision and March 2012 Final Order.

“While we are saddened by leaving this Christ-centered place of worship, we rejoice at the outpouring of encouragement and offers of assistance, including furnishings and building space from Presbyterians, Baptists, Catholics and other friends. Through these many blessings, we are equipped with the knowledge that God has great plans in store for our congregation. Ultimately, our passion for spreading the Gospel and reaching the lost will not wane,” said The Rev. Dr. John Yates, rector of The Falls Church Anglican.

According to Rev. Yates, the challenge has not hindered the congregation in its ministries and missions. “In spite of the litigation since 2006, we have established thriving, independent ‘daughter’ churches in Alexandria, Arlington, Vienna and beyond. We hope to plant our seventh daughter church this year in the District of Colombia. Meanwhile, we have more than 2,000 people in worship and fellowship each Sunday. Also, more than 450 teenagers participate in one of the largest youth programs on the East Coast.”

Junior Warden Carol Jackson added, “For several years we have been experiencing the power of healing prayer in our own congregation and recently began a partnership to extend that ministry in the Baileys Crossroads area, with Columbia Baptist Church and St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church. Together, we minister to the poor and the immigrants among us in the Culmore Clinic. People from all walks of life, all faiths, and all economic situations, now have a safe place to ask for and receive prayer and excellent medical treatment.”

Between 2005 and 2007, The Falls Church Anglican and 14 sister Virginia congregations voted by overwhelming majorities to separate from The Episcopal Church and the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia. The move was taken because the congregations determined that The Episcopal Church had drifted so far from orthodox Christianity that they could not in good conscience remain under its spiritual authority.

“The cost to the congregation has been and will be huge. Locating available worship space for a church of our size and office space for over 100 staff and volunteer ministry leaders remains extremely challenging. In spite of this adversity, we remain steadfast in our decision to take a bold stand for the authority of Scripture,” said Senior Warden Sam Thomsen.

The Falls Church Anglican has remained at the forefront in the formation of orthodox Anglican institutions in North America. Members of the parish have been leaders in the creation of the Anglican Church in North America, the fast growing (nearly 1,000 congregations and 100,000 worshippers) national organization, and the Anglican Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic (38 congregations and nearly 6,000 worshippers each Sunday), in Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, and the District of Columbia.

“We leave without resentment or acrimony; we pray only the best for those who will follow us in our historic church, that the transforming Good News of Christ will always be proclaimed in this place,” Rev. Yates concluded.

On Sunday, May 13, The Falls Church Anglican will hold services at its current location, 115 E. Fairfax Street in Falls Church, Va. Services of praise and thanksgiving will also be held later that evening. All are welcome to attend and are invited to future worship services as well. Please check the church website (www.TFCAnglican.org) for service times and locations.

The Falls Church Anglican is a member congregation of the newly established Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic, a regional and growing diocese of the Anglican Church in North America dedicated to reaching North America with the transforming love of Jesus Christ. The Diocese consists of 38 member congregations.

I had been somewhat concerned that the Falls Church statement might reveal a similar drift toward collaborationism and compromise with false teachers that was clearly evident in Truro’s statement and subsequent FAQ. Thankfully, my concerns seem to have proven unfounded. The Falls Church stands firm as she always has.

Follow-up on “Hide the Kids!”

In my post “Hide the Kids!”, I suggested that the “Children, Youth, and a New Kind of Christianity” conference in Washington this week might wander off into areas that you wouldn’t expect at such a conference. I couldn’t get to it, I’m afraid, but Bart Gingerich of the Institute on Religion and Democracy did, and writes about one workshop in particular:

One workshop was devoted to “welcoming the rainbow children” (kids from same-sex/other heterodox couples). We here at IRD pride ourselves on knowing the latest fad in gender abbreviations since they change so often. Yesterday, I heard the latest and newest: GLBPTICQA. That’s right, we’re almost running out of fingers. It stands for gay, lesbian, bisexual, polyamorous/pansexual [this saddens me because that was my catchall term], transexual, intersex, cisgender/curious, queer/questioning, and asexual/allies. You can thank me later for helping you win next week’s trivia night.

I don’t know who the person who ran this workshop, Melinda Melone, is (though based on a Google search on the name, I have my suspicions), but I want to thank her for offering the world the longest acronym since ADCOMSUBORDCOMPHIBSPAC (Administrative Command, Amphibious Forces, Pacific Fleet Subordinate Command)

IRD: Sitting through nonsense so I don’t have to. Thanks, folks!

What’s a Principle Between Bishops?

The Rt. Rev. John C. Bauerschmidt, Bishop of Tennessee, walks a fine line. He is a co-plaintiff, with his Diocese, in a lawsuit he brought against St. Andrew’s parish in Nashville, which in 2006 voted to leave the Diocese of Tennessee and join the Diocese of Quincy. And in that capacity, he recently received a favorable decision from the Court of Appeals, holding that because ECUSA is “hierarchical” at all three levels, the General Convention’s Dennis Canon, enacted in 1979, overrode the parish’s attempt a year before, in 1978, to remove from its Articles all references to the national Church and its canons.

In other words, even though St. Andrew’s had declared in 1978 that it would no longer abide by the national Church’s canons, the Church could, simply because it is “hierarchical”, unilaterally impose a trust on St. Andrew’s property in 1979 by passing a new canon. Said the Court of Appeals:

St. Andrew’s asserts that no matter how clear the church governance documents may be regarding establishment of a trust, those documents do not create a trust in this instance because they simply do not apply to St. Andrew’s. This argument is based upon St. Andrew’s assertion that The Episcopal Church is not hierarchical for all purposes and, in particular, with regard to property ownership and control.
...

The trial court described the organization of The Episcopal Church, including its three tiers and the governance of the general or central church, its dioceses, and its parishes. Those facts establish that The Episcopal Church is a hierarchical church, using the test set out above and the tests applied in Tennessee and other courts.

As stated earlier, property disputes arising when an Episcopalian congregation decides to break away from The Episcopal Church have been before the courts in a number of states. In all of the opinions we have reviewed, either the parties agreed, or the courts concluded, that The Episcopal Church is hierarchical…. 

St. Andrew’s has cited no case in which a court has concluded The Episcopal Church is not hierarchical, for property matters or otherwise….

In reaction to this decision, Bishop Bauerschmidt issued a statement which said in part: “The Bishop and Diocesan leadership have a responsibility to see that resources held in trust for the Episcopal Church are used for the Episcopal Church..” It was, of course, Bishop Bauerschmidt and his attorneys who gave the Court its ammunition and its arguments, because they wanted to enjoy all the benefits that come from being classed as “hierarchical”, even in a State which supposedly applies “neutral principles of law” to church property disputes. But the Tennessee Court of Appeals went the plaintiffs one step farther. It held that St. Andrew’s could not even raise a disputed issue of fact as to whether ECUSA is hierarchical:

St. Andrew’s [Nashville] contends that it created a genuine issue of material fact concerning whether The Episcopal Church is hierarchical for temporal matters, including property disputes. St. Andrew’s submitted an affidavit by a former bishop of a diocese in Illinois, an affidavit by a board member of a diocese in Florida, and a document entitled Bishops’ Statement on the Polity of The Episcopal Church (the “Bishops’ Statement”). The former bishop stated that The Episcopal Church is not hierarchical for any purpose. The board member opined that The Episcopal Church is not hierarchical for “the issues in this dispute.” The Bishops’ Statement is dated April 18, 2009, and appears to be authored by fifteen or so bishops and former bishops, but does not appear to be sanctioned by The Episcopal Church or the General Convention. The Bishops’ Statement suggests, inter alia, that The Episcopal Church is a voluntary association of equal dioceses.

The affidavits St. Andrew’s offered do not create a disputed issue of material fact because the affiants were simply offering their opinions and interpretations of the constitutions and canons, not facts. The constitutions and canons, as well as St. Andrew’s filings and Articles of Association, speak for themselves and are determinative of the issue. As discussed earlier in this opinion, when resolving disputes involving hierarchical churches, the courts will defer to the highest church authority on questions of church governance. In such situations, the courts “are bound to look at the fact that the local congregation is itself but a member of a much larger and more important religious organization, and is under its government and control, and is bound by its orders and judgments.” Watson v. Jones, 80 U.S. at 726-27. We think that includes interpretation of church governing documents and interpretation of the basic organization of the church. Consequently, we cannot conclude that there is a factual question regarding the organization and governance of The Episcopal Church and will not inquire into it.

What is remarkable about this casting aside of all contrary evidence is that the Bishops’ Statement, which the Court denigrates because it “does not appear to be sanctioned by The Episcopal Church or the General Convention”, is a statement published in 2009 by fifteen bishops who were all founding members of Communion Partners—of which Bishop Bauerschmidt has been a member since shortly after he assumed diocesan authority in 2007.  He now sits on its Bishops’ Advisory Committee.

The Bishops’ Statement was notoriously leaked by Episcoleft bloggers ahead of its formal publication, in April 2009, by the Anglican Communion Institute, and quickly became their cause célèbre. The bloggers saw no problem in violating privacy and publishing personal emails, because it was more important to “out” the Communion Partners‘ outrageous plans to assert diocesan autonomy, in what they saw as a betrayal of the new Presiding Bishop’s authority.

The resulting brouhaha may have deterred some Communion Partner bishops from signing on to the Statement when published—we will never know. Along with the Anglican Communion Institute, as already noted, fifteen of the twenty-one CP bishops signed the Statement—and Bishop Bauerschmidt was not one of them. (He was still six months away from filing his lawsuit against St. Andrew’s.)

Nor was he a signatory to the recent and controversial amicus brief filed in the Fort Worth case now pending before the Texas Supreme Court, which was signed by seven CP bishops. The brief took the position that ECUSA was not hierarchical above the level of its dioceses, i.e., that the dioceses themselves were autonomous and subject to no higher authority in the Church. As such, it directly opposed the “official” position of ECUSA, emphasized over and over again in its brief in the Fort Worth case, that it was “hierarchical” from top to bottom, with the dioceses occupying the middle level between General Convention and individual parishes.

Thus Bishop Bauerschmidt may take pride from his membership in and advisory role to an organization whose other members are openly opposed to the version of Episcopal “hierarchy” being pushed on the courts by the Presiding Bishop and her attorneys. He may even agree with that stand when it comes to his own Diocese’s autonomy; we may never find out.

When, however, it suits his purposes to use the hierarchy argument to impose the Dennis Canon on a parish against its express will, and despite its attempts to opt out of any such trust in advance, he finds it convenient to align himself with the Presiding Bishop’s position, because it provides him with a ticket to victory in his own case. And he does so, even though it undermines everything for which his fellow CP bishops are presently risking their careers and their miters.

It’s as Groucho Marx once memorably said:

“Those are my principles. And if you don’t like them—-”

[here he paused, and raised those famous eyebrows several times while taking a puff on his cigar, before resuming in a softer voice:]

“Well, I have others.”

PCUSA Leaking From Other End

Well, “leaking” may be too strong a word–one church is really no more than a very small dribble. Nevertheless, it is interesting to see that there are those for whom the Presbyterian Church (USA) is not moving fast enough. From Reuters:

As throngs of religious conservatives break from the U.S. Presbyterian Church over the ordination of gay ministers, a small gay-led California parish is staging a schism of its own, saying the church has done too little to accept homosexuality.

The West Hollywood Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles plans to formally join the ranks of the more liberal United Church of Christ on Saturday.

“I can’t wait” said the Rev. Dan Smith, a gay pastor who has led the progressive congregation with about 57 members since the 1980s. “It’s like being released from an abusive relationship,” he told Reuters. “We’re ready to be set free.”

Apparently the mere presence of people in a denomination who don’t approve of his sexual practices is too much for Rev. Smith. Gotta wonder, though: given that the rules were just changed last year to allow sexually active gay pastors in the PCUSA, how exactly has he been pastoring at West Hollywood since the 1980s? Why didn’t he and his little band decamp to the UCC long ago, rather than waiting until victory had been achieved?

The church allows its ministers to bless gay unions but prohibits them from performing same-sex marriages.

By contrast, the United Church of Christ allows gay and lesbian weddings and has long welcomed gay clergy.

The Presbyterian Church’s highest court recently ordered the Rev. Jane Spahr rebuked for performing state-sanctioned gay and lesbian marriages in California, including the marriage of the Rev. Lisa Bove and Renna Killen.

Ah, that must be it. Of course, “rebuked” essentially means they wagged their finger in her general direction and said, “you’re not allowed to do this, at least until the next time you do it.” But still, who likes getting fingers wagged in their vicinity and harshed with tepid language?

Bove, Killen and their 10- and 13-year-old daughters belong to the West Hollywood church, and the Rev. Smith officiated at their wedding alongside Spahr. As a lifelong Presbyterian, Bove, 51, said she felt sad about her church’s move.

“But I’m not sad for the congregation,” she said. “All people deserve the chance to be loved, to know that their parent church body is proud of them and celebrates their gifts.

“The United Church of Christ is proud to have us. Presbyterians are just waking up to tolerate us. We want our gifts celebrated, not just simply tolerated.”

This, of course, is where the real answer lies. For the folks at WHPC, all must bow to the god of gay. Homosexual behavior must be proclaimed as the most fantabulous thing evah, or else they will feel all rejected and stuff. And we can’t have that, now can we?

Bishop Nazir-Ali: Jesus, Lord of His Church and of the Church’s Mission

If you have any time to read at all, it will be worth your while to spend it reading this excellent talk given by The Rt. Rev. Michael Nazir-Ali at the London GAFCON meeting.

Now when we read these exalted statements about the Church, naturally we ask: to what or to whom does this apply? And there are several senses of the church, both in these letters and generally, I wish to draw to your attention. First of all, is that church, elect in Jesus Christ, which has existed from all ages, God’s people throughout the ages and throughout the world as a result of God’s gracious purposes for his creation. St Paul calls this in the Letter to the Galatians [4:26] “Jerusalem our mother which is above.” That is the Church that is meant, not simply a human institution, but of and from the divine plan. Certainly that Church is meant. But Paul is very capable of coming down to earth, so in the Letter to the Colossians certainly there is this sense of God’s eternal purposes being worked out among his people, but there are also references to local churches. St Paul speaks of the church of God at Corinth or we might say at Laodicea or Rome or Ephesus or whatever it may be. This is the church in a particular town or a particular city as it is gathered together by God’s will and the work of the Spirit in the life of the believer. It is a very important manifestation of the Church. So much of what is said in the New Testament is addressed to churches such as these.

But there is, I think, another sense in which the word ‘church’ is used in the New Testament. In his letters to churches in various towns - Romans, for example or Colossians - Paul often remembers the church that is in people’s homes [Romans 16:5; Colossians 4:15]. Now of course the early church did often meet anyway all together in someone’s home, but I think this usage is different. This means a part of the church in Laodicea that is at Nympha’s house or a part of the Church in Rome which is to be found in Prisca’s and Aquila’s home or part of the church in the home of Lydia or Chloe (it is interesting to see how many women are mentioned in this context). Each of these is properly called God’s church. The church in someone’s home clearly shares a likeness – people are like one another, it is a family representation – and this also allows us to express church where people are like one another, in interest or profession or ethnicity perhaps or language. I used to be rather hostile to people speaking of the church in this way, where the church is characterized by homogeneity, but I now see, from a more careful reading, if you like, of the New Testament, that there is a valid understanding of the church here that is possible. A church like that of Fresh Expressions - so many of the Fresh Expressions in this country are characterized by homogeneity. That is fine but a church like that is not enough. It has to be balanced by other things. One of them of course is the diversity of the church in the wider community. In the New Testament it is a town: Rome or Ephesus or Corinth or Laodicea, wherever it might be. These churches in the town – I suppose our parishes are not unlike this church, parishes like this one - such churches are now characterized not by homogeneity but by diversity. It is here that we noted both in St Paul and in the Letter of James instruction given about poor and rich together for instance, people of different social status - cosmopolitan centres many of these cities were – and so people of different races and languages, Jews and Greeks and many different sorts of people. So when we speak of the church, we have to keep all of this in mind.

When can we say in this situation or that, that the church of God, the church of Christ is present to a sufficient extent that the Lord is among his people? Article XIX, which is appropriately titled ‘Of the Church’, says that ‘The church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men in which the pure Word of God is preached and the sacraments duly administered.’ And I think each of those phrases is important. If congregations - Ashley [Null] was telling us in our seminar that ‘congregation’ is nearly a translation of ekklesia - congregation of faithful men, however that may be expressed - in a household or town-wide in a parish church, the faithfulness, faithful men, faithful people (that is important), people who have come to know the Lord, people who are committed to the following of Jesus Christ, in which the pure Word of God is preached. How often we are told here in the Church of England: ‘Vicar, you are going to keep to seven minutes, aren’t you?’ I think it is possible to preach the pure Word of God in six or seven minutes, but it is not desirable. And so ‘sermonettes lead to Christianettes’, as is so often said. The whole counsel of God has to be brought out. ‘The pure word is preached and the sacraments duly ministered, according to Christ’s ordinance’. That is, brothers and sisters, what makes the church, not a sociological understanding of community – I mean, that’s useful to have – not an understanding that relies purely on venerable tradition and place – I’m not saying those are unimportant - but faithful people, the preaching of the pure Word of God and the sacraments. Without these things there may be denominations, there may be ancient traditions and churches, but are they any more the church of Christ? Or has the glory departed?...more

North Carolina: Full of Stoopid People

I saw a map today that purports to explain the vote for Amendment One in North Carolina. It seems that the only counties to vote against Amendment One, which defines marriage as being exclusively between a man and a woman, were those with significant universities:

Of course, this demonstration of the intellectual superiority of those who voted against Amendment One would be more impressive if it were correct:

Mecklenburg County had 92,503 people vote against Amendment One, resulting in 54 percent of the vote, according to the North Carolina State Board of Elections.

Buncombe (Asheville), Chatham, Dare (Outer Banks), Durham (Durham), Mecklenburg (Charlotte), Orange (Chapel Hill), Wake (Raleigh) and Watauga (Boone) counties all voted against Amendment One as well.

The map above has Guilford County (UNC-Greensboro, Greensboro College) and New Hanover County (UNC-Wilmington) voting against it, whereas the NC Board of Elections, as of 4:42 this afternoon, has both approving it by narrow margins. Meanwhile, Dare County at the coast—home to a branch campus of the College of the Albemarle, a community college—voted against it, and the map above has it approving it.

All hail our new Academic Overlords!

UPDATE: Forgot to mention—Amendment One also passed in Forsyth County (Wake Forest University), Pitt County (East Carolina University), and Jackson County (Western Carolina University). Those aren’t real universities, I’m sure. Or it may just be that they are surrounded by stoopid people.

Wednesday Afternoon Refresher: GK Chesterton on the Family

Now, exactly as this principle applies to the empire, to the nation within the empire, to the city within the nation, to the street within the city, so it applies to the home within the street. The institution of the family is to be commended for precisely the same reasons that the institution of the nation, or the institution of the city, are in this matter to be commended. It is a good thing for a man to live in a family for the same reason that it is a good thing for a man to be besieged in a city. It is a good thing for a man to live in a family in the same sense that it is a beautiful and delightful thing for a man to be snowed up in a street. They all force him to realize that life is not a thing from outside, but a thing from inside. Above all, they all insist upon the fact that life, if it be a truly stimulating and fascinating life, is a thing which, of its nature, exists in spite of ourselves. The modern writers who have suggested, in a more or less open manner, that the family is a bad institution, have generally confined themselves to suggesting, with much sharpness, bitterness, or pathos, that perhaps the family is not always very congenial. Of course the family is a good institution because it is uncongenial. It is wholesome precisely because it contains so many divergencies and varieties. It is, as the sentimentalists say, like a little kingdom, and, like most other little kingdoms, is generally in a state of something resembling anarchy. It is exactly because our brother George is not interested in our religious difficulties, but is interested in the Trocadero Restaurant, that the family has some of the bracing qualities of the commonwealth. It is precisely because our uncle Henry does not approve of the theatrical ambitions of our sister Sarah that the family is like humanity. The men and women who, for good reasons and bad, revolt against the family, are, for good reasons and bad, simply revolting against mankind. Aunt Elizabeth is unreasonable, like mankind. Papa is excitable, like mankind Our youngest brother is mischievous, like mankind. Grandpapa is stupid, like the world; he is old, like the world.

Those who wish, rightly or wrongly, to step out of all this, do definitely wish to step into a narrower world. They are dismayed and terrified by the largeness and variety of the family. Sarah wishes to find a world wholly consisting of private theatricals; George wishes to think the Trocadero a cosmos. I do not say, for a moment, that the flight to this narrower life may not be the right thing for the individual, any more than I say the same thing about flight into a monastery. But I do say that anything is bad and artificial which tends to make these people succumb to the strange delusion that they are stepping into a world which is actually larger and more varied than their own. The best way that a man could test his readiness to encounter the common variety of mankind would be to climb down a chimney into any house at random, and get on as well as possible with the people inside. And that is essentially what each one of us did on the day that he was born.

This is, indeed, the sublime and special romance of the family. It is romantic because it is a toss-up. It is romantic because it is everything that its enemies call it. It is romantic because it is arbitrary. It is romantic because it is there. So long as you have groups of men chosen rationally, you have some special or sectarian atmosphere. It is when you have groups of men chosen irrationally that you have men. The element of adventure begins to exist; for an adventure is, by its nature, a thing that comes to us. It is a thing that chooses us, not a thing that we choose. Falling in love has been often regarded as the supreme adventure, the supreme romantic accident. In so much as there is in it something outside ourselves, something of a sort of merry fatalism, this is very true. Love does take us and transfigure and torture us. It does break our hearts with an unbearable beauty, like the unbearable beauty of music. But in so far as we have certainly something to do with the matter; in so far as we are in some sense prepared to fall in love and in some sense jump into it; in so far as we do to some extent choose and to some extent even judge—in all this falling in love is not truly romantic, is not truly adventurous at all. In this degree the supreme adventure is not falling in love. The supreme adventure is being born. There we do walk suddenly into a splendid and startling trap. There we do see something of which we have not dreamed before. Our father and mother do lie in wait for us and leap out on us, like brigands from a bush. Our uncle is a surprise. Our aunt is, in the beautiful common expression, a bolt from the blue. When we step into the family, by the act of being born, we do step into a world which is incalculable, into a world which has its own strange laws, into a world which could do without us, into a world that we have not made. In other words, when we step into the family we step into a fairy-tale.

From the book Heretics, Chapter XIV, by GK Chesterton

Trinity Skyscraper - Fall 2012 Enrollment

Racing to the Polls in North Carolina

I bet this photo made faithful North Carolinian Christians absolutely salivate to get to the polls.

I mean if Episcopal clergy are against it - the moral compasses that they are - it must be evil.

Delta Pulls Ads From ‘Daily Show’ Over ‘Vagina Manger’

Being a Christian in modern America means having to learn to live with the most infantile, imbecilic, offensive attacks on your faith and its followers, so in general I try to counsel people who are upset by stunts like this to just let them go, walk way, recite the beatitudes quietly to yourself. Being perpetually outraged at slurs on one’s faith is, after all, a market that’s been cornered by the Muslims, and lord knows we don’t want to make them upset by muscling in on their turf.

But the Catholic League’s Bill Donahue has a nose for sniffing out those line-crossings which are most likely to strike a nerve in the public, and he often uses them to great effect. His latest involves Jon Stewart’s Daily Show and a bit called the “vagina manger” (stupid, possibly NSFW image at this link). I think what’s going to be most interesting about this episode is not necessarily how long Delta Airlines stays away from The Daily Show, or whether Kellogg’s follows Delta’s lead and pulls its ads, but how many of the people who just a few weeks ago insisted Rush Limbaugh should be jailed for calling a woman a slut, will now insist that Stewart is being “silenced.”

Catholic League president Bill Donohue declared an early victory in his campaign against the Daily Show for a joke about a “vagina manger,” after Delta Airlines pulled its advertising from the program.

Donohue also pledged in a press release to continue his campaign. His next target: Kellogg’s, whose executives can expect to receive photographs of the obscene stunt.

Hide the Kids!

There’s a conference on youth and children’s ministry going on in Washington, DC this week. That by itself would hardly be newsworthy. What makes this conference unusual is the line-up of speakers and presenters. This is what the conference web site says about it:

In May of 2012, leaders, ministers, volunteers, parents, and students will gather in Washington, DC, USA to spark conversations about youth and children within a new kind of Christianity. They will talk about innovative practices, critical issues, and controversial topics like violence, racism, interfaith dialogue, and sexuality. They will embark on a journey together to engage in life-giving ministry with young people. And they will blaze a new trail for the 21st-century church.

Here are some of the presentations: keynotes:

•Brian McLaren, “Christian Faith (and) the Next Generation: Why We Need this Conference”
•Almeda Wright, ”Personal Jesus, Public Faith: Cultivating a Generation of Young Public Theologians”

18-minute presentations:

•Tony Campolo, “A Letter to My Grandchildren”
•Shane Claiborne, Title TBA
•Dave McNeely, “A New Kind of Sexuality: Finding a Framework”
•Starlette McNeil, “A New Kind of Life: What Would Jesus Do about Racism?”
•Lisa Schirch and Leymah Gbowee, “God’s Security Strategy: Peacebuilding”
•Rebecca Seiling and Amy Gingerich, “Teaching Peace to Children”
•Jim, Joy, Luke and Jack Wallis, “Let’s Say Grace”
•Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., “To Serve this Present Age”

Workshops:

•Melinda Melone, “Welcoming Rainbow Kids: Resources and Approaches for Working with Youth in the GLBTIQA Community”
•Christopher Rodkey, “The Synaptic Gospel: A Neurological Approach to Religious Education”

This list isn’t exhaustive, and I don’t want to suggest that the conference is all bad. I’m sure there will be some very good teaching and discussion. What I find peculiar is the number of political activists making presentations at a youth and children’s ministry conference. And what in the name of Elijah Muhammad is Jeremiah Wright doing in the middle of something like this? Is he there to answer Sharlette McNeill’s question, “what would Jesus do about racism?” with “hate white people!”?

Bishop Todd Hunter Joins the ACNA (Updated)

Anglican Ink reports that Bishop Hunter has left Bishop Murphy’s whatchamacallit and has joined the ACNA. This is good news. I especially appreciated this section of the report:

Bishop Hunter also stated that he had asked for and had received forgiveness from the Primate of Rwanda, Archbishop Onesphore Rwaje for “my part in actions, attitudes or communications that were hurtful to him or to my brother bishops in Rwanda…more”

There had been some concern that Bishop Hunter’s role in the upcoming ACNA Provincial Synod might in some way legitimize the schismatic actions of Murphy and his followers - of which Bishop Hunter had been one. Now those concerns can be put to rest. May more AMiA bishops follow Bishop Hunter’s lead.

Update: Here’s a statement from Bishop Hunter’s office received via emai:

The Rt. Rev. Dr. Todd Hunter has requested transfer from the Anglican Province of Rwanda to the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh of the Anglican Church in North America.  Bishop Todd has requested to serve as Bishop with Special Mission.  He will continue to lead Churches for the Sake of Others (C4SO) as his principal call in ministry and will be headquartered on the West Coast.

Bishop Hunter looks forward to meeting with Archbishop Duncan in Pittsburgh in the next few weeks to achieve the canonical and jurisdictional precision necessary for a church planting mission to work cooperatively with provincial and diocesan structures.

Medical Study: restricting abortion does NOT lead to increased maternal mortality

“In Chile, therapeutic abortion was prohibited in 1989 ...  While over 50% of all abortion-related hospitalizations were attributable to complications of clandestine abortions during the 1960s, this proportion decreased rapidly in the following decades.  Indeed, only 12-19% of all hospitalization from abortion can be attributable to clandestine abortions between 2001 and 2008. These data suggest that over time, restrictive laws may have a restraining effect on the practice of abortion and promote its decrease. In fact, Chile exhibits today one of the lowest abortion-related maternal deaths in the world, with a 92.3% decrease since 1989 and a 99.1% accumulated decrease over 50 years.”

Significant research.  Again and again, science itself refutes the lies needed to prop up abortionist ideology.  Have this study on hand next time somebody says, “But if you restrict abortion, women will die by millions in back alley coathanger abortions!”

Tuesday Morning: A Little Something from George MacDonald

I am filled with awe of what I have to write. The sun is shining golden above me; the sea lies blue beneath his gaze; the same world sends its growing things up to the sun, and its flying things into the air which I have breathed from my infancy; but I know the outspread splendour a passing show, and that at any moment it may, like the drop-scene of a stage, be lifted to reveal more wonderful things.

From Lillith, by George MacDonald

Presbyterians for Hate

The Israel Palestine Mission Network (IPMN) is an approved organization within the Presbyterian Church (USA). It will be playing the same role at the upcoming PCUSA General Assembly that United Methodist Kairos Response played at last week’s UM General Conference, which means it will be the front group that funnels the work of outside activists into the denomination’s decision-making process.

The IPMN is run by people who either are anti-Semites, or who have no scruples about consorting with them. For the last three years, I and a handful of Presbyterian bloggers have tracked the IPMN’s frequent plunges into the sewer. I’ve done so at The Reformed Pastor in more than two dozen posts (the most revealing being this, this, this, this, this, this, and this—check out the last one inparticular; Gilad Atzmon is so bad most of the Palestinian solidarity movement won’t have anything to do with him). So bad did it get that the IPMN finally shut down its Facebook page, so that its approval of anti-Semitic tropes would be more difficult to track.

They still have a Twitter feed, however, and they’ve been no more careful about their linkage there. Yesterday, they linked to something called the Orthodox Cognate Page, which is run by a collection of people associated with the Malankara Orthodox Church of India. The link is to an article by a Palestinian Muslim journalist, Khalid Amayreh, who makes clear why he thinks Palestinian Christians are having a hard time of it:

But the special hatred (and contempt) of Christians by Jews, especially Orthodox Jews, goes deep in history and certainly precedes modern Zionism by numerous centuries.

According to Yisrael Shahak, author of Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years, Judaism is imbued with a very deep hatred toward Christianity, combined with ignorance about it. He argues that Jewish hatred of Christianity, though partly aggravated by Christian persecution of Jews, was mainly religious and theological in nature. ...

[Shahak’s book is anti-Semitic propaganda, filled with fabrications, one of which is this: “...both before and after a meal, a pious Jew ritually washes his hands… On one of these two occasions he is worshiping God… but on the other he is worshiping Satan…” (p. 34)]

Hence, one can safely claim that Jewish and Judaic hostility to Christianity is inherent and intrinsic and transcends all Christian pogroms, including the holocaust. ...

There is no doubt that Jewish hostility, dormant or otherwise, to Christianity is being deliberately kept secret as much as possible by much of the media in the West. This per se constitutes a conspiracy. After all, why of all themes and subject, Talmudic perceptions of Christianity and Christians remain more or less a taboo in western scholarship?

This is the kind of stuff that the IPMN is recommending their followers read. This is the organization that will be leading the charge for PCUSA divestment. This is a group that the denomination ought to have repudiated long since, but which still resides in the good graces of its leadership.

I Don’t Know, Therefore I Sue

“I certainly can’t claim to know the details of this emerging church – no one can, yet – but it will need to be more flexible and open to varied expressions of church community.”  Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori

It is difficult to write rationally and charitably about this statement. 

First, I want to avoid the temptation (strong though it is) to rip just the Presiding Bishop for words so manifestly untrue to her actions.  That this statement even shows up on our denominational website is the ugly evidence of sin and death “emerging” all over our church.

So let me make and be done with the point that her time as PB, judged by her deeds and her use of church money, gives the lie to her pretense of being a person “flexible and open” to “varied expressions of church community.”  Her actions are so full of personal and ideological certainties that her claim to “not know the details of the emerging church” is fake humility, unctuous and sickening to read:

This PB sets records for purging the church of clergy representing “varied expressions of church community.”  Her flunkies ultimately rewrote the disciplinary canons of the denomination, removing pretty much all substantial legal protections for clergy.  Team Schori attempted to create sanctions for use against lay people, an idea at first turned back but on stand by for an opportune time.

Fellow SF blogger Allan Haley, in his Anglican Curmudgeon incarnation, investigates the PB’s litigation campaign to stamp out “varied expressions of church community.”  At least $25,000,000 (twenty five million dollars) fueled at least 75 (seventy five) lawsuits against dioceses, congregations and even lay volunteers who disagreed with the PB’s ideology of a lockstep LGBT&c church.  This is the single most measurable undertaking of her time as PB.

Most damning is her nonstop assertion of “hierarchy” as the defining quality of Episcopal Church organization.  “Flexible, open and varied” indeed.

But as I said above, the denominational rot cannot be blamed on this one person.

She was elected to her office - she is our denomination’s choice.

There have been numerous efforts to get an accounting of the lawsuit spending.  Most of these didn’t have to reach her desk to be ignored - they were shouted down by clergy and laity at the diocesan level.  “We shouldn’t make problems for Bishop Katharine” was just one of the objections used to defeat a call for accountability put forward at the Diocese of South Dakota’s Convention a few years ago.

Too many clergy and congregations (I and my own being no exception) make do by ignoring the excesses of the PB and the “hierarchy” she’s invented.  We have an array of excuses for “keeping things local”  and “not upsetting the good work we are doing here.”  Despite several years of preaching, blogging, teaching and otherwise outing and confronting denominational problems, I find that a significant chunk of my congregation has no idea what’s going on.  Among those who do, only a few want to differentiate as a “varied expression of church community;” most just want to duck and cover and a few, it turns out, want to kneel and pledge fealty to her.

The biggest problem is our willingness to sit and cluck and never recognize that you can’t have all of our purported “flexibility, openess, variety, inclusion, tolerance, freedom of thought, etc.” and then accept the unilateral spending, actions and claims of a “hierarchy” or (even worse since a hierarchy has at least some coherent order) a cult of personality.

That “Bishop Katharine” can blush and softly proclaim herself “unknowing, open and flexible” while initiating lawsuits to stamp out those who question her views reveals that we have a great many empty hearts inhabiting our increasingly empty pews and pulpits.

Texas Atheist Turned Christian Turns Atheist Again

In April I noted - with optimism of the most extremely cautious sort - the conversion of Patrick Greene. With a reference to the failed conversion of novelist Anne Rice, I wrote that “I guess I’ve seen too many of these episodes end in grief to be very optimistic.”

So I hate to say I told you so, but… yeah:

It was an inspirational tale — especially for Christians who felt that Patrick Greene, an atheist from East Texas, had finally seen the light. But now, just weeks after announcing that he had converted to Christianity, the secular activist is, once again, a non-believer.

Last month, we reported about Greene’s conversion after he had initially threatened to sue over the presence of a nativity scene on the Henderson County courthouse lawn in Athens, Texas. Despite his actions against the religious symbol, local Christians came together to raise funds for him and his wife to purchase groceries after they learned of an illness he had been stricken with. Greene was so moved by the gesture that he converted to Christianity.

While the story made its rounds as an inspirational tale that showcases the power of kindness and giving, Greene’s transformation was short-lived. On Saturday, the activist e-mailed The Blaze to proclaim that he is no longer a Christian and that he has returned to his atheistic roots.

Updated: Prayer - Diocese of Singapore to Elect New Bishop

The 2012 synod of the Diocese of Singapore meets later this week on Friday and Saturday 11&12 May. While there’s obviously lots to do, the main item of interest will be the election of a new bishop, replacing John Chew [wiki] who has served in that capacity (and, more recently, as Primate of SE Asia).

It’s a key appointment, not only as leader of a wonderfully missionary diocese (Singapore diocese is active in Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Nepal) but also in terms of current global Anglicanism. John Chew is the current secretary of the Global South movement which has been a great body for resisting revisionism in the Communion. I had the privilege of attending clergy conference in Singapore a few years back and it was apparent that John Chew is determined to do all that he can to strengthen the orthodox cause worldwide. Also significant is the diocese’s partnership with the diocese of Egypt under Archbishop Mouneer Anis. That relationship should be regarded as one of the backbones of the whole Global South movement.

There are a number of possible candidates although at least 2 are prominent.

1. Assistant Bishop Rennis Poniah, who recently addressed the ACNA 2012 Assembly, also serves as vicar of St Johns & St Margaret’s church in Singapore. Well respected as a leader and teacher he would be a popular choice and well-received by overseas friends. I’ve met him on a number of occassions both here in Sydney and in Singapore and can report that he’s a delightful, godly man. You can get more of a sense of him from this recent talk given to ordinands in the diocese.


2. Dean Kuan Kim Seng of St Andrew’s Cathedral. Again, well respected in the diocese but perhaps not so well known outside. Nevertheless also regarded as an excellent choice by those that I’ve asked.

No doubt there will be other names in the hat too.

Do please pray for this upcoming election. In terms of its significance for the Anglican Communion, it would be hard to understate it. The new bishop will have to step into very large shoes (and not just because Bishop Chew stands well over 6ft!) and take up a quite awesome responsibility in working with the Global South and others to hold fast to the gospel and encourage others to do likewise.

Update

I’ve checked a few things with some sources in Singapore and it turns out there isn’t likely to be an election. The common understand amongst the Singapore clergy is that the decision on the new bishop for this Diocese has already been taken. A special meeting of the synod was called at the beginning of March, when each member of synod was asked to nominate three candidates. The names of the three who received the majority of nominations were then forwarded to the bishops of the province, who were entrusted with the task of interviewing them, with a view to identifying the candidate to be appointed.

The agenda for each of the two sitting days for the coming synod has no further role for the synod in the election process - ie., there’s no reference to the matter at all, so the appointment is likely to be announced at some stage of the proceedings.

For someone with a Western mindset that might be perceived as being the wrong way to go about things, but that would be to assert our own cultural values. This is an Asian diocese with a high priority placed upon respect for elders and collegiality amongst those same elders. Even worth considering where in the Scriptures democracy is ever held out as the means by which such leaders are chosen!

Nevertheless, do continue to pray for the diocese of Singapore and the Bishop-elect, whoever he is!

Spanish Bishop Publishes Ex-gay Testimonies on Diocesan Website after Attacks from Homosexual Groups

April 25, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Juan Antonio Reig Plà, the Catholic bishop of the Spanish diocese of Alcalá De Henares, has responded to recent attacks by homosexual groups by posting testimonies on his website of individuals who rejoice in their abandonment of the homosexual lifestyle.

“I want to thank especially those who feel, or have felt, Same-Sex Attraction (SSA), and have seen fit to send me your testimonies; more than one hundred of you have written your experiences up to now,” writes Reig Plà. “I must thank you because I have seen in them the hand of God and I have learned much from your suffering and your hopes.”

Bishop Juan Antonio Reig PlàHe adds that those who have written “are collaborating in this way to break the barrier of silence regarding the possibility of change for those who freely wish to do so, and that’s why it’s important to publish and spread them!”

The letters were published following a controversy created by a sermon given by Reig Plà on Good Friday, in which he compared the misery of those who are living the homosexual lifestyle to hell. He then generated outrage from homosexual and socialist groups by recommending therapy for homosexuals in a follow-up interview. The testimonies the bishop published speak of the suffering entailed in the homosexual lifestyle, as well as hope for overcoming homosexual tendencies.

Don’t Forget to Take Your Baby Pills

These are the people the President “prods” on human rights. These are the people whose one-child policy the Vice President refuses to “second guess.” These are the people who permit, even encourage tens of thousands of forced abortions every year. From the UK’s Daily Mail:

Thousands of pills filled with powdered human flesh have been discovered by customs officials in South Korea, it was revealed today.

The capsules are in demand because they are viewed as being a medicinal ‘cure-all’.

The grim trade is being run from China where corrupt medical staff are said to be tipping off medical companies when babies are aborted or delivered still-born.

The tiny corpses are then bought, stored in household refrigerators in homes of those involved in the trade before they are removed and taken to clinics where they are placed in medical drying microwaves.

Once the skin is tinder dry, it is pummelled into powder and then processed into capsules along with herbs to disguise the true ingredients from health investigators and customs officers.

There have been disturbing reports that some babies were those who had perished in China’s notorious ‘dying rooms’ where youngsters are deliberately left to die because they were born into families that already had the limit of one child in country areas.

In order to keep its population down, China performs 13 million abortions a year - mainly because mothers sacrifice their newborns to avoid punishment such as severe fines or even a beating by the authorities.

The Chinese authorities have confirmed that 38 per cent of women of child-bearing age have been sterilised - but the babies that are aborted do not go to waste because of the sickening trade in using their corpses for purported medicinal purposes.

No Credible Evidence for Warren Native American Ancestry Claim

From Brietbart.com. 

So why would Ms. Warren’s great-great-grand-uncle make up such a thing? Perhaps he showed the same kind of tendency towards ancestral “embellishment” that she herself seems to exhibit, or perhaps there was some logistical or tactical benefit in the Oklahoma Territory of 1894 to him and his intended bride that encouraged him to make the claim. Or perhaps he believed it to be true, even though in all probability it was not. We will likely never know.

But what makes this story so important?

It’s important because Elizabeth Warren has just become the poster child for everything that’s wrong with the way the left engages in political dialogue. They make assertions that are either simply untrue or cannot be substantiated by any evidence, and they call anyone who would challenge them a racist, a flat-earther, a “bow-tying white boy”, or worse.

As Ronald Reagan said, “the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.”

Running Defense: Navigating the Perils of a Dying Organization

The initial shock and disappointment by many over the actions of Truro Church with the Episcopal bishop of Virginia, Shannon Johnston, have settled down and from my standpoint, all the arguments have been stated and people have chosen what they believe and what they do not.

Some Anglicans simply don’t think it’s a problem for Truro to declare an Episcopal bishop who has approved of and promoted blessings of men or women who engage in sexual acts together a “brother in Christ” nor do they find an issue with promoting his “ministry” to the Church of England or to other provinces. But for those of us who do find that as well as several other statements and actions a grave problem, what principles or values guide our decisions on how we treat Episcopal bishops and clergy who believe and have actively promoted significant and very damaging heresy in the church? What principles and values guide how we respond to false teachers in the Anglican Communion?

I’ve assembled a short list of principles and values that dioceses, parishes, church leaders, and laypeople assume as they navigate the difficulties within the Anglican Communion and as they consider their lawsuits, settlements, ministries, common Eucharists, and other matters. These principles and values are helpful reminders - a sort of glossary - for those of us engaged in the culture wars in organizations both national and international. Again, obviously these principles and values do not apply to those who aren’t troubled by the actions of Truro in regards to its relationship with the Episcopal bishop of Virginia, Shannon Johnston. But I think they will be helpful for the rest of the conservatives both inside and outside The Episcopal Church, and even for conservatives in other organizations, both ecclesial and secular.

1) We are engaged in something that is commonly called “the culture wars” - that is, the battles that a non-Christian society engages in as varying sides seek to promote differing foundational worldviews in politics, academia, professional and business organizations, the church, the arts, the media, and many other areas of common life. The culture wars are heightened by the fact that the old organizations and institutions that had promoted a common way of living are crumbling. That decomposition is also intensified by a practice of “furtive deconstruction” of language, ideas, and values; that is, some individuals who wish to use common language to promote their own, differing ideas and values and worldview are evacuating common language of meaning, filling it with their own personal and sometimes antithetical meanings, and then using those same words to mean something entirely different from what most have understood as the meanings of common language and ideas.

Deconstructionists assert that there is no absolute, overarching, and objective “truth” out there which stands in judgement over our own individual assertions of truth; rather, deconstructionists assert that the meaning of a word, a text or an institution resides in the reader or participant or “discourse community.” We “make our own meanings” is a common statement; those meanings don’t actually exist or come from the mind of the maker - the writer, the composer, or the creator. We fill the constructs of others with “meanings” ourselves.

So words like “justice,” “love,” “holiness,” “marriage,” and many many other words are slated for revision, but often with no advance warning that the meanings of those words are being changed. Further, those same people are performing the same acts of deconstruction on cultural institutions, including in particular historic organizations that have achieved some degree of credibility and influence in society. In that way, institutions and organizations that have been “deconstructed” become the megaphones for the messages of the culture wars.

The philosophical act of deconstruction is a sly, rhetorically violent, and destructive act.

2) One of the leading edges of the culture wars - a place that has been most heavily infiltrated by revisionist activists - is a once-influential mainline church called The Episcopal Church. Most bishops, many clergy, and some laity are deconstructionists who are attempting to reform that church into an organization that promotes their own particular, personal worldview, one that is antithetical to the Gospel.

In order to deconstruct The Episcopal Church and fill that body with their own particular and uniquely personal worldviews, they are destroying it utterly. Its decline has been precipitous in every way, from membership to attendance, from baptisms to marriages, from pledging to parishes, from dioceses to seminaries, it is dying. And it is dying at a significantly more rapid rate than other mainlines.

It is not dying in a slow and gentle way, but rather with dramatic and violent lashings and thrashings. This death is being conducted publicly in the secular media, on blogs, in pulpits throughout the land, at conventions, in committees, on vestries, on commissions, at Executive Council, at clericus meetings, and in so many many other venues. Lay leaders, rectors, bishops, professors, people in the pews, chairs of committees—all are confronting, whether they wish to acknowledge it or not, the consequences of the death of an institution. Many people are hurting over this death. Parishes are closing, seminaries are selling off assets, parishioners are determining where their ashes and legacies will be stored, Sunday Schools and youth groups are vanishing, and the elderly and dying are grieving.

3) The question of whether these bishops, clergy, and laity who are engaged in deconstructing The Episcopal Church and filling it with their own personal worldviews are “Christians” is a red herring. None of us can see a heart, or know a person’s eternal destination. All we can know is what these people say and promote in direct and public contradiction to the Gospel. When they publicly articulate and promote beliefs and acts that are antithetical to the Gospel, we can then recognize that they do not believe or promote the Gospel.

We cannot know if they are or will be regenerate and experience God’s salvation. But fortunately for us, we do not need to make such judgements in order to enact the church discipline that Scripture clearly commands regarding false teachers and false shepherds - those who enter the sheepfolds as wolves, rather than shepherds. Indeed, Scripture does not comment on whether these false teachers may someday repent and experience God’s salvation. Nor does it tell us if false teachers may even be regenerate, but fallen away or not yet discipled enough to teach and promote the Gospel. Often new or untutored or undiscipled Christians who happen to become leaders through the fault of the organization may believe or teach a false and heretical belief simply because they are too immature, weak, and ignorant to know better. But speculating about the state of a false teacher’s soul - about whether he is or is not a “brother in Christ” - is unnecessary and irrelevant to one’s actions regarding church discipline. All that Scripture tells us is how to respond when a person becomes a leader in the Church and begins to publicly proclaim false teaching in that Church.

4) Those who promote blessing sexual acts between men or women, along with other acts of “inclusion” that seek to bless and promote and encourage unrepentant sinful acts, have had to heavily deconstruct and repudiate Scripture, tradition, and reason. In none of those three categories is there a strong case to be made for blessing, promoting, and encouraging sinful acts which Scripture clearly opposes, and in order to flagrantly violate those three pillars of Anglican theology, they have had to become “People of the Lie” in a significant way, unable to exercise godly leadership or authority over Christian believers, though certainly they may attempt to do so and may hold an office giving them that power.

5) In order to bless, promote, and encourage sex acts between men or women - in order to call those acts holy and blessed - bishops and other leaders have had to do great violence to the sacraments in general, to marriage, to Christian anthropology, to Holy Scripture, to authority in the Church, and to the Gospel. In no sense is a promoter of sex acts between men or between women “orthodox” in his views of Scripture, the nature of man, the Fall, sin, repentance, redemption, transformation, the Church, sacraments, or the Gospel; he or she has had to violate and twist all of those things in order to cling to his false teaching and promotion of sex acts between men or women.

All of this has been written and spoken about in article after article, speech after speech, sermon after sermon - literally hundreds of them from Anglicans alone - and no where better than in Kendall Harmon’s extensive and significant iceberg talk, whose introduction begins here. There is no such thing as a leader in a Christian church solely or merely promoting same sex unions. In every case, such heretics feature, believe, promote, and proclaim far more significant and foundational heresies.

6) Such heresies are devastating to not only a church’s witness and proclamation of the Gospel, but deeply damaging to the souls and bodies of many thousands of people who are seeking God’s guidance on the use of their bodies and approach to sexual relationships. Bishop Shannon Johnston’s false proclamation that there can be sex acts between two men or two women that are holy and blessed is like giving antifreeze to a thirsty runner and pronouncing it an excellent and sustaining “fruit juice.” It is a horrific, false act that will deeply damage others who are hungry and thirsty and seeking. It is spiritual malpractice of a high degree.

7) Through Holy Scripture - a Holy Scripture that Bishop Johnston has had to deconstruct of meaning and fill with his own preferred “truths” - God speaks about the devastating damage a false teacher can do within a church, and the urgent need of a church to repudiate such false teachers, to call them to repentance, and then, when necessary, to deprive them of their authority to teach and preach and perform the sacraments. They are to be treated, ultimately, as tax collectors and pagans - even if technically they are no such thing at all. If teachers and other leaders are not publicly repudiated and deprived of office, the Church’s witness is terribly deformed and ultimately destroyed as sinners in need of salvation learn that the Church teaches only what is convenient to it and the surrounding culture.

8) When a Church is unable or unwilling to repudiate numerous false teachers, that Church becomes weakened and unable to throw off the infection of heresy. Ultimately, without intervention, the organizational body that enfleshes the Church will decline and die. Within that failed organizational body - whether it is the organization called the Anglican Communion, or the more local organization called The Episcopal Church - there must be leaders and laypeople who are willing to publicly repudiate such false teachers, carefully boundary off the communion fellowship as best they can, and guard such flocks as they are able from such false teachers, whose function now is only to introduce further poison into the weakened body of Christ. Because such leaders and laypeople cannot - sadly - work through the larger body to repudiate and publicly cast out such false teachers, they must form smaller boundaried organizations and subsets of the whole in which they work to publicly repudiate and differentiate themselves from the false teaching that is now permeating the Church organization.

Clergy guard their parish flocks from the teaching of the heretic bishop, bishops guard their diocesan flocks from the teachings of the heretic bishop, and laypeople, as best they are able, refuse to share public communion with publicly known, scandalous false teachers. All three groups recognize that no organization or even individual can be left “untainted;” no one can be completely pure nor should we try to be. But where it is clear that a person is teaching and promoting and blessing scandalous sin in clear violation of Holy Scripture, tradition, and reason, it is their duty to differentiate themselves strongly from such people and such teaching, guard any flock they can - whether parish, diocese, or family - and treat such people as tax collectors and pagans. It should be very clear to the surrounding culture and communities that such teachers are not accepted as “one of” the subsets within the sick and eventually dying organization. They are “tax collectors and pagans” - not “brothers in Christ” even though they may continue to reside in the organization and purport to exercise authority in that organization, even though they may or may not be regenerate. By their actions they demonstrate publicly that they do not believe or promote the Gospel.

9) One of the primary goals of the clergy, bishops, and laity who are promoting the false teaching of the goodness and blessing of sex acts between men or between women is to use organizations - their credibility, authority, influence, and prestige - to spread their teachings and their foundational worldviews about sin, the Gospel, Holy Scripture, marriage, repentance, transformation, the nature of man, the Fall, and the Church - to the rest of the culture. The organizations that these people infiltrate and take over serve as “trojan horses” to the rest of the culture. From such organizations, these men and women attempt to speak with some authority and credibility - albeit a falsely appropriated and artificially transferred authority and credibility - to the surrounding culture, pushing their beliefs through their chosen vehicles of the organizations they have subsumed and transformed from within. The surrounding culture sees the facade of a formerly credible and reputable and godly organization, but from within, it is a rotting, hollowed out facade.

10) Within The Episcopal Church, heretical bishops and clergy have taken a significant hit - in influence, in publicity within secular media, in numbers of followers, in the strength and health of their dioceses and parishes, in money, and in public credibility. All around the country and around the world, they have succeeded by their actions and words in becoming a “stench to the nostrils” of other believers, both Anglican and otherwise. Some of those bishops and clergy who are false teachers do not care about such losses; it is not important to them that the church is declining and may die, so long as they can use the organization, for the time being, to promote their foundational worldviews. They will - to those within the Church who are resisting their foundational worldview - call it “the cost of discipleship,” talk about quality over quantity, and assert that “growth” occurs in different and better ways than that of growth in “numbers.”

11) Other false teachers within The Episcopal Church are deeply troubled by the losses of influence, numbers of followers, strength and health of their dioceses and parishes, of credibility, of money, and most particularly an increase in bad publicity in the secular media. I place Shannon Johnston in this category. They are desperate for a restoration of those things - in particular their credibility and their influence - and a lessening of negative publicity. They would rather go slower in their quest to promote their vision of Scripture, the nature of man, the Fall, sin, repentance, redemption, transformation, the Church, sacraments, and the Gospel, as long as they can maintain some semblance of credibility, authority, and influence. Such false teachers are eager to promote the notion that there is “reconciliation” with those whom they have personally sued and deposed, and from whom they have taken their property. They need - they desperately need - to be seen as merely “brothers in Christ” who may be wrong on some comparatively minor issues, but in overall Gospel and mission are in unity with those whom they have bullied and abused.

“Reconciliation” is also a red herring. It is repentance that is called for; reconciliation occurs through and in Christ and when one is dealing with false teachers in the Church who are carefully and calculatingly deconstructing that church it is not “reconciliation” that is called for at all nor can any human being offer such a thing. Reconciliation is not anyone’s for the taking or the offering in such matters. Reconciliation is the fruit—the happy consequences—of repentance, fellowship, unity, and in-Christness. Such words in no way describe the nature of the relationship between defenders of the Gospel and the false teachers they have repudiated until the false teachers are no longer false teachers.

The very best thing to happen for those false teachers to continue to prop up their own lost reputations and credibility is for those Christian leaders whose task is to defend the Gospel, to properly boundary and articulate the identity of the Church and its doctrine, to protect a flock, and to strongly differentiate themselves from false teachers to the surrounding culture and the surrounding Church, is for those Christian leaders to declare false teachers like Bishop Johnston “brothers in Christ” and to promote their “ministry” to the wider Church, rather than publicly repudiate their “ministry” to the wider Church.

12) When a parish, diocese, leader, or layperson loses a significant battle - whether it is a lawsuit, a church trial, a committee decision, an election, or some other public issue - it is important that that parish, diocese, leader, or layperson “lose well.” Losing well often involves a) public, clear, stark differentiation - whether in the form of a minority report or other official declaration (recall that Kendall Harmon issued a minority report of one at a General Convention - one of his finest and most courageous moments) so that the world and the Church may see the differences between the ideas of the heretical false teacher, and the ideas of those who are proclaiming the Gospel, b) damage to the ideas that the false teachers are attempting to propagate through their office, and c) continuing depletion of the false teachers’ credibility, witness, cause, authority, and influence to the broader community and remainder of the Church.

As long as you have made the distinctions clear between the competing ideas - the Gospel as opposed to the peculiar, personal, provincial foundational worldview of the false teacher - it is a very good thing for the false teacher to receive deep damage to his or her credibility, authority, influence, and power through the secular media and through any other legal tools at one’s disposal. It is not a time to embrace the false teacher or to help the false teacher save face or look like something other than he is - the purveyor of deeply damaging and false ideas to which he has come through embracing lies and by attempting to deconstruct the Scripture and the Church and the Lord to which he has sworn allegiance.

Clearly, such a principle also means that one does not allow the false teacher to attempt to offer a “witness” to the watching world and the watching church, and in so far as “displacement” means preventing and hindering the false teacher’s mission of deconstruction and propagation of further heresy and further damaging his credibility and influence, than certainly trying to “displace” Bishop Johnston is precisely what a disciple of Christ attempts to do, where it is in his power.

The above dozen principles are fairly basic and simple - common sense for Christians, whether in the 21st or 2nd centuries. People may speculate about the details of what actions or choices to take when confronted with particular situations, but the above overarching principles can guide us in our decisions. My hope and belief is that the majority of Anglicans who believe the Gospel are working within these principles as they deal with false teachers in the Anglican Communion, although it is clear that some are not.

But admittedly, they are not easy to enact, particularly when we’re in a church that is deeply corrupted and heretical. Navigating the perils of a dying organization can be confusing and it is always deeply painful and saddening.

All of that - the pain and the confusion and the sadness, coupled with the weight of corruption and heresy - can make Christians want to throw up their hands and retire to their monasteries and libraries and refuse to engage within their various organizations and institutions.

All I can testify to is that if you can stay with Christ, and fight the battle that He’s given you in the organization in which you reside with honor and courage (that which He gives you), suffering both defeat and victory with joy and in peace, you will grow. You can’t help but do so.

Years ago, back in 2004 - (and who knew we’d all still be blogging eight years later) - I made a cautious but growing commitment, to learn what I needed to learn while going through what was clear would be the complete destruction of a church that I hold very dear and love very much. The very worst thing in suffering is in realizing later on that you must go through it all over again, since you didn’t “get” the lessons and the growth that you had needed the first time. I can hardly think of a greater tragedy than to experience deep suffering, to come out of it on the other end, and to have the same character and the same level of wisdom, discernment, and fruit of the Spirit that one had at the beginning of it all.

If we are to suffer in losing our church, and in perhaps losing the Anglican Communion, let God prepare us for something more - even some greater battle - by our learning what we need to learn and growing more mature, wise, and strong. To put it in more physical terms, if we are to be punched in the stomach over and over again, let’s learn to set our stomach muscles like the Kung Fu masters of old, who certainly seemed to be capable of undergoing spectacular suffering in the midst of their training and discipline.

The point of losing is to learn to lose better, and to learn to someday win, and then to learn to win better. The point of suffering is to become better people in the suffering, not to remain the same ignorant, gutless, dishonorable people we once were, while recognizing humbly that we will never be whole, complete, or perfect until we are face to face with Him.

In all of this, God is blessing me, and He is blessing you. He is blessing me with many joys - with love and fantastic work and running and the outdoors and significant volunteer work and wonderful groups of people covering so many walks of life, and family and friends. And He is blessing me with the loss of my Church and in that loss, giving many wise lessons that I can apply to many other events, activities, relationships, work…  and battles farther down the road.

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

Archbishop Wabukala Withdraws Support from Bishop Murphy’s New Thing

I was surprised to learn that Archbishop Wabukala had thrown his support behind Bishop Murphy’s new thing. Perhaps he was surprised too? Here’s Bishop Murphy’s announcement of the Archbishop’s withdrawal:

I received word this morning via email that Archbishop Eliud Wabukala has withdrawn from the College of Consultors for the Anglican Mission.  I am obviously disappointed, but I am certain that he has been under enormous pressure from many in the GAFCON leadership. Our commitment to move forward with our vision to position the AMiA as a ‘Society of Mission,’ and to hold the necessary convocation to ratify a formal Constitution and Statutes on June 4th in order to give shape and order to our common life in the Mission, will continue.”

This is good news. And, whatever the backstory, a wise move for ++Wabukala. The Murphyite group should be given no legitimacy in the Communion until there is public repentance.

Al Mohler:  Bigotry on the Ballot? No, Dishonesty in the Editorial

From Christianpost.com: 

The paper has every right to editorialize as it chooses, and an editorial against Amendment One is no surprise to any informed reader of that paper. But look closely at the language used. The effort to limit marriage to the union of a man and a woman is described as “obvious discrimination.”

That is meant to insinuate that the effort is therefore wrong, and even immoral. But that is just not intellectually honest. Discrimination - even “obvious discrimination” - is not necessarily wrong at all. Indeed, any sane society discriminates at virtually every turn, as do individuals. The law is itself an instrument of comprehensive discrimination. We classify some crimes as misdemeanors and others as felonies. We allow some persons to teach in our schools, but not others. We recognize certain persons as citizens, but not others. 

The Sermon as “Super Moon”

Bear with me while I fly a little kite…

Yesterday evening saw a Super Moon, a rare moment when the moon was about as close to the earth as it can get. It appeared 14% bigger and 30% brighter than a normal full moon. The proximity of the moon also brings about higher tides. I took Ouldlet #2 out into the chilly night air to have a good look and we stood momentarily still in wonder, until the cold got the better of us.

Same moon, same image, just momentarily brought into stark relief.

Now the kite-flying. It occurs to me that a good sermon is a little like the Super Moon. Quite often the congregation will not hear anything starkly new but those timeless familiar truths are presented boldly and clearly and closely so that one stops and considers them. Take for example our sermon this Sunday at church on Article XXXVIII of the 39 Articles, “On Christian Men’s Goods”. In one sense we heard nothing new but were reminded that

1. In an incredible act of generosity, Christ became poor for our sakes so that we might have the riches of God
2. That the Resurrection of Jesus forever changes our investment horizon so that we have an eternal perspective. This is turn leads us to not cling to the things of “this life”.
3. That the gospel of grace calls us and changes us so that we might ourselves be gracious.
4. That here in Sydney, particularly where we are in Neutral Bay, we are comparatively very wealthy.

Now, as already stated, none of these things were new but they were presented to us afresh and, if you like, more “in our face” than before. I do not think it presumptuous to claim that God was pleased to use this “Super Moon” to bring about a renewed desire amongst many to use their God-given wealth wisely, just as the Super Moon brings about a larger tide.

Same truths, freshly and closely presented. What do you think?

image: SuperMoon over Ayia Napa, smh

Methodists Crucified Palestinians, Says Methodist Missionary

Earlier this week, the General Conference of the United Methodist Church made a decision that it would not order divestment from three companies doing business with Israel. Rather, it would continue to consider ways to engage both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the words of one Palestinian advocate, who also happens to be a United Methodist missionary at the Bethlehem Bible College, the General Conference has crucified the Palestinians much as Christ was crucified. Alex Awad writes:

In describing the trial of Jesus before Pilate, Luke the Evangelist brilliantly described the mood of the crowd when he wrote, “But with loud shouts they insistently demanded that he be crucified, and their shouts prevailed.” (Luke 23:23 NIV)

On May 2, 2012 at the United Methodist General Conference in Tampa, Florida, once again shouts of injustice prevailed over the shouts of those who yearned to see actions promoting justice in Palestine. United Methodists and Jewish allies had come from around the world to stand in solidarity with Palestinian Christians who called for divestment to help end Israel’s occupation. But opponents spread fear and misinformation that carried the day.

The delegates of the United Methodist Church considered three resolutions that dealt with the Israel-Palestine question. The first two passed in favor of justice for the Palestinians, in particular against the occupation and settlements, but these two resolutions have little practical power in them to change realities on the ground. The third resolution, which called for divesting United Methodist Pension Funds from three companies that support and sustain the occupation through their machines and technologies, was defeated with the final tally showing 39% in favor of divestment and 61% opposed.

On May 2, “…their shouts prevailed” and I watched with pain my people being crucified again.

As a Palestinian I am concerned about the occupation of my homeland, the settlements, the separation wall and all the other forms of injustices but as a Christian, I am more concerned over the health of the Church. A Church that is not ready or willing to hear the voice of the oppressed and stand with justice is out of sync with the will of her Head and Maker.

Words fail me.

Pruning the Vine for Greater Fruit

Today’s Gospel reading, illuminated by a fine sermon, got me to thinking about all the news these past weeks of parishes settling the Church’s lawsuits against them, walking away from their buildings and bank accounts, and starting afresh without either. Just in the first five months of this year, we have witnessed a massive transfer of wealth from the CANA parishes to the Diocese of Virginia—well over four million dollars’ worth of real estate and nearly three million in cash and securities. A similar transfer, though not on the same scale, has occurred in Savannah and in Connecticut, as well as in New York, Ohio, Los Angeles, San Diego, Kansas, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina and Colorado. Add to those cases the massive transfer of diocesan endowment funds and parish properties ordered by Judge James in Pittsburgh, and the total transfer of wealth into the Episcopal Church from its realigning parishes must add up to thirty million dollars, if not more.

Now consider that phenomenon in light of what Jesus tells his disciples in today’s Gospel reading:

15:1 “I am the true vine and my Father is the gardener. 15:2 He takes away every branch that does not bear fruit in me. He prunes every branch that bears fruit so that it will bear more fruit. 15:3 You are clean already because of the word that I have spoken to you. 15:4 Remain in me, and I will remain in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it remains in the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me.

15:5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me – and I in him – bears much fruit, because apart from me you can accomplish nothing. 15:6 If anyone does not remain in me, he is thrown out like a branch, and dries up; and such branches are gathered up and thrown into the fire, and are burned up. 15:7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you want, and it will be done for you. 15:8 My Father is honored by this, that you bear much fruit and show that you are my disciples.

The litigation history traced in outline above shows that a great deal of pruning has been going on in Christ’s church. But those who have endured it may take heart from our Lord’s assurance that “He prunes every branch that bears fruit so that it will bear more fruit.”

There are two criteria for the one doing the pruning: first, that the branch have borne fruit in the past, and second, that pruning it will cause it to bear even more fruit in the future. It seems to me, from what I am aware of the histories of the various parishes that have suffered such severe pruning, that nearly all of them are continuing to flourish, or have (with regard to the more recent ones) every expectation of doing so.

What is there to say, however, of the church which laid claim to all this wealth as its own? From 2001 and continuing through the present, the numbers for the Episcopal Church (USA) have shrunk by every measure on which statistics are collected. Its budget shrank by nearly a third from its peak of $152,000,000 just after the current Presiding Bishop began her term of office to the proposed $104,852,000 for the next three years, with further cuts planned beyond that. The sermon I heard today called attention to these words of Jesus, as well:

“Remain in me, and I will remain in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it remains in the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me.”

As General Convention approaches, ECUSA and its several dioceses are all busily taking stock of themselves, and proposals for “restructuring” are a dime a dozen. What today’s sermon brought home to me, however, is that “the branch cannot bear fruit by itself.” I am not laying a blanket charge against all of ECUSA that it is trying to be fruitful all on its own, without remaining in Christ. When I remember, however, that General Convention could not even bring itself to affirm the uniqueness of Christ just three years ago, and when I hear the Presiding Bishop speaking of how the Church must first die before it can be saved, I have to wonder if the truth in Christ’s words to his disciples is not being borne out in front of our very eyes.

For those preparing to head off for Indianapolis, here are two more sentences to ponder from today’s reading, and to weigh carefully whether they might have any application to the questions there to be addressed:

“If anyone does not remain in me, he is thrown out like a branch, and dries up; and such branches are gathered up and thrown into the fire, and are burned up. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you want, and it will be done for you.”

Sunday Worship - May 6, 2012

Sunday Worship

Sunday, May 6, 2012

Worship

The bells of St Mary’s, Andover in Hampshire - BBC Radio 4

Sunday Worship from Highfields Church in Cardiff - “Grace” and how it influences and shapes our lives - BBC Radio 4

Sung Eucharist from the chapel of St John’s College, Cambridge - SJCC website
Choral services from the chapel of New College, Oxford

‘The Apostles’ - Elgar - BBC Radio 3 recorded at Easter in King’s College, Cambridge [2 1/2 hrs but wonderful]

Sermons and Talks

All Souls, Langham Place and their 3,500 sermon searchable archive

St James the Less, Pimlico

Cathedral Church of the Advent, Birmingham Alabama

Bishop Tim Dakin’s Enthronement Sermon - Dio Winchester [video and text]

Philippians 1:12-30 - Archbishop Peter Jensen - St Mark’s Battersea Rise audio

‘Faith under Fire’ - Canon Andrew White at St Paul’s Hammersmith audio

more in the evening service

‘Ekron of the Philistines’ - Dr Seymour Gitin, Albright Institute, Jerusalem - Lanier Theological Library Vimeo

Bishop of London’s Easter Day Sermon - St Paul’s Youtube [text]

Prayer

Please pray for the church in Iran, Nigeria, Kenya. Sudan, Egypt, the 4,000 Falls Church, Virginia congregants about to be expelled from their church, for religious freedom in Canada. Please also pray for the recent marriage of Archbishop Wabukala of Kenya with the Rev. Rhoda Luvuno

Topical Prayers - Church of England [including a prayer for various countries]

Prayer for the persecuted church - CofE site

Easter Prayers and Devotionals - Lent and Beyond Prayersite

News for Prayer

Iran: ‘Youcef Nadarkhani’s lawyer reportedly imprisoned’ - Christian Today

Guardian report

‘Protestant Pastor Sentenced to Six Years’ - report from ICHRI

Nigeria: ‘Boko Haram target university campus and press for first time’ - CSW

Kenya: ‘Grenade Attack on Church in Kenya Kills One’ - Open Doors

Sudan: Appeal from the Primate

Appeal from the Bishop of Aweil

‘Attacks on Churches’ - Open Doors

Egypt: ‘Egyptian military detains 300 protesters after unrest’ - BBC News

Virginia: The Falls Church Update [part 1, part 2]

‘Canadian student suspended over Jesus T-shirt’ - Christian Today

‘Anglican Church of Kenya congratulates Primate on his marriage’ - ACNS

Current Affairs

Sunday Program - current affairs with Samira Ahmed - BBC Radio 4 - available from 07:10 am BST Sunday

Prayer Book Anniversary: ‘St Paul’s marks 350 years of Book of Common Prayer’ - dio London

Address by the Bishop of London at the Prayer Book 350 anniversary evensong at St Paul’s

‘Monarchy and the Book of Common Prayer - Lambeth Palace Library Exhibition

Food for Thought

‘Who do we worship?’ - Mark Bailey - CEN

‘Violence in Nigeria: Breaking the Country’s Fatal Deadlock’ - Sunday Agong - Christianity Today

‘Christians ‘Most Persecuted’ Religious Group in the World, Says Expert’ - Christian Post

‘Baptists celebrate 400th anniversary in London’ - Christian Today

‘Coalition stung in local elections’ - Christian Today

‘Internet helps to spread Gospel in Turkey’ - Christian Today

The Making of a Christian Leader: Michael Green in conversation’ - Highfields Church in 2010

‘The Unseen Sea’ - Simon Christen Vimeo [click ‘HD’ if loads slowly]

‘Oh be joyful in the Lord’ [Psalm 100] - Godolphin Vocal Ensemble - BBC

To comment on today’s worship, click here.

Presiding Bishop Thinks the Episcopal Church “Too Slowly Evolves”

The presiding bishop seems to think that Tec is evolving too slowly.  Silly God.

“We need to discover ways to engage in the outside community,” Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said, in urging the 125 delegates attending the Province II Synod of the Episcopal Church to recognize that while many believe the church is an unchanging rock, it too slowly evolves.

I’m sure this group is only dying because it is “too slowly evolving.”  Yes, I am sure that is it.  It can’t possibly be because in their headlong race to be the first to win the diversity game, they have stepped on, walked over and disposed of sound teaching based on Scripture.  Nah, that can’t be it.

“‘We are beginning to discover a way forward into a new chapter in the church’s history,” Jefferts Schori said. “If we are going to save the life of the church, we are going to have to lose it.”

Well, there may be some good news for Katharine after all.  Someone call her and let her know that Tec has lost all life - at least the kind with any meaning whatsoever.

No Comment Necessary

The Very Rev. Robert Munday takes note on his blog To All the World of the latest fashion note for the upcoming 2012 General Convention:

For each General Convention of the Episcopal Church, the convention office publishes a “Blue Book” containing all the reports of the Committees, Commissions, Agencies and Boards to be presented at that Convention.  Although it is called a “Blue Book,” the color varies for each General Convention.  In the seven times I have attended, it has been brown, burgundy, olive green, various shades of blue, etc.

This July, the General Convention is scheduled to deal with a resolution recommending the adoption of liturgies to bless same-sex relationships.  Would you like to guess what color the “Blue Book” is?

Click here to find out.

You just can’t make this stuff up!

I wonder if Cokesbury will team up with the manufacturer of these to offer a package for performing the new ceremonies.

The Episcopal Church (USA)—saying in so many ways: Pink and Proud of It!^TM

UK:  Anglican Preacher Pulled from Pulpit after Advocating Traditional Marriage

Seems there is a bit of a dust up over in the UK: 

An Anglican lay minister has been temporarily banned from preaching at a church in the U.K. after a service in which he advocated for the traditional definition of marriage upset some of those in attendance.

Peter Gowlland, a retired science teacher, apparently encouraged worshippers to sign a petition against the government’s plan to introduce same-sex weddings. The preacher asked of church-goers to be “bold like the apostles” in their vote in support of the traditional definition of marriage. The Telegraph reported that what followed was a “brief and polite” disagreement with two other lay readers in front of the congregation and a retired bishop.

His Grace reported on this earlier in the week which evidently raised a few hackles and the diocese issued a response. 

It appears they took offense to His Grace claiming the lay reader of 50 YEARS had been suspended.

The Archdeacon asked the Reader to refrain from ministry in the particular parish for two months in order for there to be time for these pastoral matters to be resolved.

  They also refused to renew his license.  Sure sounds like a suspension to me. 

I guess the diocese didn’t think the comments of Ms. Duncan and Ms. Bird contradicting Mr. Gowlland’s statements merited the same treatment. 

And together, without warning or discussion, they came to the lectern and exhorted the congregation not to sign the petition. “There are other views,” they said. “Do not sign it without giving it very careful thought.” Ms Duncan turned to Mr Gowlland and said, “Just in the interests of balance, Peter.”

Tomato, tomatoe, indeed.

The Pretzel Logic of Abortion Advocacy

The odious Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (also known as the Church of Moloch) recently replaced its High Priest of Kiddie Death. The new mouthpiece for the Grim Reaper is one Harry Knox, an Episcopal priest, who has an article at the Huffington Post entitled, “Why Religious People Should Support the Rights of Women in Reproductive Decisions”:

Lately, headlines have been full of reports of religious condemnation of abortion and birth control. As a person of deep faith, I believe the opposite: I believe that—as a matter of social justice—religious people should support the rights of women to make decisions about bearing children, including about abortion and birth control. God’s love encompasses all creation. It includes a woman in labor and it includes a woman having an abortion. It does not stop at the door to a women’s clinic. For women, justice must include the right to make decisions about sexuality and reproduction.

So because it is part of creation, God loves it when women have abortions. Some other things God must love:

•Children dying from malaria, typhoid, dysentery, starvation, and abuse
•Women dying as a result of honor killings
•Sex trafficking
•Poverty, war, famine

All part of “God’s creation.

This is a good time to reconsider why religion should support, not oppose, women’s reproductive rights. Here are six reasons:

1. Religions hold that all human life is sacred—and include the life of a woman as well as that of a potential child. This belief inspires many religious communities to work for a world in which women are healthy and every child is wanted, loved and cared for. Those religious communities support birth control, safe and legal abortion, and health care for all.

To say that RCRC holds that unborn life is “sacred” is like saying the Green Bay Packers believe in non-violence. RCRC doesn’t even consider women’s lives sacred, which is why it is opposed to laws requiring that abortion clinics report rape and incest to police, as well as regulations that would ensure that abortion mills are actually safe.

2. Religions value the responsible and loving use of the gifts of sexuality and reproduction. The decision to become pregnant and have children is one of the most important we make as individuals and couples. We have a sacred responsibility to support the rights of women in this process because women have the responsibility of bearing children.

So because women have the responsibility for having children, that means we should support any decision they make regarding it. Equally, we can say that since men are responsible for half the procreative process, we should be supportive of any decision they make with regard to where they deposit their sperm.

3. Planning one’s family is a fundamental right and responsibility. It is a key factor in determining the physical, social and economic health and well-being of individuals, their families and their communities. Religious institutions and people of faith have an obligation to contribute—as other organizations do—to ethically grounded policy on sexuality and reproduction.

The problem, of course, is that RCRC has no “ethical grounding” to their positions on abortion. What they’ve done is taken a totally mindless libertarianism—“people should be able to do anything they want as long as they don’t hurt anyone we consider important!”—and turned it into a political absolutism that has as much to do with religion as it has to do with growing asparagus.

4. People of faith certainly have differing views on abortion and even on birth control, but most of us agree that God has endowed women with free will and the ability to make moral decisions. Free will isn’t a matter of politics or ideology and it’s not to be exercised only when it’s convenient. An unwanted pregnancy or a pregnancy that threatens a woman’s health and life requires a decision that is made freely, with information that resources and support are available, whatever the decision.

So because God endowed women, and in fact all people, with free will, they should be able to do pretty much anything they want. Having free will means I should have the right to drive drunk, shoot off a gun anywhere I want, charge 100% interest on credit cards, refuse to serve black people at my lunch counter. Sounds like fun.

5. Reproductive rights are central to the lives of women and girls along with access to education, health care, equal opportunity and human rights. Women’s full participation in life and full expression of self requires that reproductive health care and options are available. This is especially true for women who are economically marginalized, who have unintended pregnancy rates that are four times as great as other women. In this country, half of all pregnancies are unintended and about half of those end in abortion. That means one in three women will have an abortion at some point in life. Use of birth control, which some opponents equate with abortion, is virtually universal. As many as 99% of women use it at some point. Access to safe, legal abortion and universal availability of birth control must be a basic part of a woman’s reproductive health care.

Last time I checked, birth control is universally available. If it weren’t you wouldn’t be able to come up with a figure of 99% of women using it at some point, would you? (I know the number is bogus, but if we accept it, it makes the claim that somehow women are being denied access to birth control because the Catholic bishops are meanies ridiculous.) As for those who “equate” birth control with abortion, it sounds to me like that’s just what Knox is doing here. For non-Catholics, however, the two are not necessarily morally equivalent, and having access to one says nothing whatsoever about whether one should have access to the other on anything remotely like the same terms.

6. We are a nation with a rich diversity of religious traditions. Decisions about birth control and abortion are medical decisions and are also decisions of conscience—what an individual believes is ethical. Since religions have varying views about reproductive rights, enshrining any one view into law restricts the ability of those who disagree to follow their own conscience and religious beliefs—thus denying them religious freedom.

Meaningless gibberish. Mormon fundamentalists claim the religious freedom to treat women like chattel. Certain Islamic lunatics claim the right to engage in honor killings of women if they step out of line. Knox would undoubtedly condemn such attitudes, and deny them the actions any protection in law. Diversity in moral opinions does not mean that we are forced to default to an absolutist libertarian position.

The harsh and condemning judgments of some religious leaders are troubling. They suggest that abortion is morally wrong, while ignoring the fact that miscarriages and unwanted pregnancies are common. They deny that God is present in these times.

Chris Johnson at Midwest Conservative Journal, who found this piece of dreck, has a terrific response to this bit of alleged “thought”:

(1) The harsh and condemning judgments about dropping a nuclear bomb on Tehran are troubling.  They suggest that the complete annihilation of Iran’s largest city and every single man, woman and child in it is morally wrong while ignoring the fact that hurricanes and tsunamis regularly destroy cities and kill innocent people.  They deny that God is present in these times

(2) The harsh and condemning judgments about setting off that bomb in a crowded city are troubling.  They suggest that terrorism is morally wrong while ignorning the fact that volcanoes regularly explode, killing thousands of people all over the world.  They deny that God is present in these times.

(3) Your harsh and condemning judgments about me boinking your wife are troubling.  They suggest that adultery is morally wrong while ignoring the fact that more men and women have sex outside of so-called “wedlock” than in it.  They deny that God is present in these times.

Feel free to supply your own in the comments.

Two women shot, one fatally, at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church outside Baltimore

Two women were shot, one fatally, inside an office in St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Ellicott City Thursday evening and a man was later found dead behind the church in what is being investigated as a possible murder-suicide, authorities said.

Brenda Brewington, 59, was pronounced dead at the scene and Marguerite Mary Kohn, 62, of Halethorpe, was taken to a shock trauma unit and remains in critical condition. Brewington is a church administrator assistant. Marguerite Mary Kohn is co-rector of the church.

George Will On His Son Jon

Read the entire piece over at The Washington Post:

This era has coincided, not just coincidentally, with the full, garish flowering of the baby boomers’ vast sense of entitlement, which encompasses an entitlement to exemption from nature’s mishaps, and to a perfect baby. So today science enables what the ethos ratifies, the choice of killing children with Down syndrome before birth. That is what happens to 90 percent of those whose parents receive a Down syndrome diagnosis through prenatal testing.

Which is unfortunate, and not just for them. Judging by Jon, the world would be improved by more people with Down syndrome, who are quite nice, as humans go. It is said we are all born brave, trusting and greedy, and remain greedy. People with Down syndrome must remain brave in order to navigate society’s complexities. They have no choice but to be trusting because, with limited understanding, and limited abilities to communicate misunderstanding, they, like Blanche DuBois in “A Streetcar Named Desire,” always depend on the kindness of strangers. Judging by Jon’s experience, they almost always receive it.

Two things that have enhanced Jon’s life are the Washington subway system, which opened in 1976, and the Washington Nationals baseball team, which arrived in 2005. He navigates the subway expertly, riding it to the Nationals ballpark, where he enters the clubhouse a few hours before game time and does a chore or two. The players, who have climbed to the pinnacle of a steep athletic pyramid, know that although hard work got them there, they have extraordinary aptitudes because they are winners of life’s lottery. Major leaguers, all of whom understand what it is to be gifted, have been uniformly and extraordinarily welcoming to Jon, who is not.

Except he is, in a way. He has the gift of serenity, in this sense:

The eldest of four siblings, he has seen two brothers and a sister surpass him in size, and acquire cars and college educations. He, however, with an underdeveloped entitlement mentality, has been equable about life’s sometimes careless allocation of equity. Perhaps this is partly because, given the nature of Down syndrome, neither he nor his parents have any tormenting sense of what might have been. Down syndrome did not alter the trajectory of his life; Jon was Jon from conception on.

So How’s Your Mongolian?

I only ask because, would you know, some people can actually answer the question.

Yes, for most of us the closest we get to Mongolia is this but then there’s Seamus. Seamus and his wife Rachel are from Sydney, but they currently live in Ulan Bator, Mongolia. “What are they doing there?” I hear you ask? Well it’s a good question with a fascinating answer.

Seamus was part of my class at Moore Theological College. It became clear very early on that he was a bit of a genius, particularly in the field of linguistics. When most of us were finishing off the vocab part of our NT greek exam he was walking out having completed every section, and written his corrections to the questions. When we were mucking in our spare time, Seamus was nailing Latin and Gaelic. For fun.

Now like me, you’ve probably met some very clever people but that’s not the same as meeting someone impressive. Seamus is impressive not because he’s clever but because he’s chosen to use the brains that God gave him to serve the God who gave him those brains. And in Seamus’ case he and Rachel have decided to get into Bible translation with Pioneers - specifically Mongolian. And to get the best results you have to go native. So they did. Which means a few months ago they got on a plane and flew to Ulan Bator, the capital of Mongolia.

Impressed? I am. And because of teh intarwebs we’re able to keep up with what they’re doing. Seamus maintains 2 blogs. The first is about his language study/work. His latest post on learning Mongolian prompted me to write this post.

Just for your curiosities’ sake.

Mongolian has a reputation for being hard, but I don’t think it’s too hard. The first obstacle is the sound system. There are four o/y vowels that can sound quite similar to English speakers, and that takes a while to get used to. Also, learning the Cyrillic alphabet might hold you up. I’d learnt the Greek alphabet and so I was halfway there.

One of the main principles in pronouncing words seems to be that after the first syllable, reduce all short vowel syllables to nothing, just cut them out and string together the consonants. In practice this means a combination of consonant clusters and schewa vowels.

Mongolian has 8 cases, which if you, as I, studied an Indo-european language might sound troublesome. Actually, it’s not so bad, because there are not really different declensions, and they are all suffixes that do not normally change the root, so really it’s just tacking endings on to words. The only variation within a case ending is in the vowel, and it always simply matches the vowels of the word itself, so that is not too hard either.

The cases are:
Nominative (unmarked), Accusative (only marked for definite direct objects), Genitive, Dative/Locative (to/for/at), Instrumental (by), Comitative (with), Ablative (from), Directional (to[wards]). See, compare to Latin, and all they’ve done is clarify the 500 usages of the Ablative for you, so that is actually helpful!

On to verbs. There are a bunch of tenses, including 4 main past tenses. Oh no you say. Good news, say I, as there are no conjugations to worry about, and verbs are uninflected for person and number. So that’s just one set of endings, depending on the vowels (so 4 very similar sets of endings. Suddenly Mongolian is looking like an easy language. Plus, the tense you use often depends on whether the action was personally witnessed or not, so the choice of tense encodes some extra meaning. What a nifty language!

Basic Syntax is not overly complicated, just remember STOP: Subject, Time, Object, Predicate. Actually, anything adverbial can just get chucked in the T-slot. This is practically Latinate, good for all those classical scholars looking to take up Mongolian.

Okay, those are some things. If I think of more interesting factoids about Mongolian I will post them.

He and Rachel also maintain a more general blog about life in Mongolia.

Another week here and life trundles along. Language classes seem to be going well. On Wednesday night we had some drama, as the people above us had left taps on while the water was off, resulting in water running into our apartment once the water came back on. With some help we had building staff turn the water off for our stairwell of units, so that was a blessing.

Also on the water front, we haven’t had hot water for several days (related??), which means no hot showers, only lukewarm to cold ones. This hasn’t been fun.

Lastly, today we bought a Mongolian language Bible, which hopefully we will start using to learn even more Mongolia!

So how’s your Mongolian? Makes you think, doesn’t it?

Why not pop by their blog and encourage them? And if it’s your thing, pray for them that they would never lose sight of the Lord Jesus Christ who has called them to this incredible work and that they would continue to find joy in it. It’s an awesome thing that they’re doing, but I’m sure if you told Seamus that he’d just tell you that it was what he was made for. And he’d be right. Which is another reason to pray and give thanks to God.

Comparative Literature: On Promoting the Ministry of Bishop Johnston

“We are so looking forward to welcoming Bishop Shannon Johnston and Tory Baucum to our Leadership Conference in London. Our prayers are with them – and all our brothers and sisters at Truro Anglican Church and throughout the diocese of Virginia – as you work together to bring peace, unity and healing.”

Nicky Gumble
Vicar
Holy Trinity, Brompton

“If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting, for whoever greets him stakes part in his wicked works.”

St. John,
Apostle of our Lord Jesus Christ

Well, at least we now know one of the “ministry opportunities” Tory Baucum has opened up for Bishop Johnston.

Here are some more documents.

Through a Glass Darkly: Considerations behind the Christ Church Settlement

Some concerns have been raised about the effect of the Christ Church settlement on the other cases now pending before the U. S. Supreme Court. The settlement need not have any effect at all, and we probably won’t know in any event whether the Court will accept either of the remaining two cases until next October 1. Let me explain my thinking.

The settlement between Christ Church Anglican and the Diocese of Georgia affects only one of the three petitions that are pending before the Supreme Court. The Diocese had been due to file a response to the petition by May 25; now it will not do so, and the justices will not read the briefs that have already been filed (Christ Church’s brief, and two amicus briefs filed on its behalf). But there are similar briefs, and similar amicus briefs, on file and to be filed in the other two cases—and the issues are virtually identical: can a national church bypass state-law trust requirements to impose a trust on all of its local parish properties? And if it can, is that not a violation of the First Amendment’s prohibition against the “establishment” of a church (i.e., favoring it in the law)?

The parties to the Christ Church case each had strong motives to reach a settlement at this juncture, before the Supreme Court acted on the petition for review. For the Diocese of Georgia, a decision to grant review could have spelled big trouble for the Dennis Canon as an enforcement tool—even before the Supreme Court heard arguments and published a decision, parishes might have been encouraged to try to leave while assuming that the special treatment the Canon had received in the courts would be brought to an end. Now, with the petition dismissed, if the Court disavows the Dennis Canon as a trust creation tool, it will happen in the context of another State’s laws (Connecticut’s).  And that would leave some wiggle room to argue that Georgia law was somehow or uniquely “different”—at least, until the Georgia Supreme Court took another Episcopal church case. 

For Christ Church, its rector and vestry, the petition to the Supreme Court was a slender straw on which to lean—most such petitions end up being denied without comment. And if the petition had been denied, then the Diocese’s lawsuit against the rector and vestry personally would have proceeded in the Georgia courts. (Actually, it would have proceeded regardless of how the Court acted on the petition. It takes a vote of just four of the nine justices to accept a case for review, and the final position of the eventual majority of five or more justices would not be known for possibly a year or more, until the Court published its decision. Thus during that year, the Diocese would still have been free to try to reduce its lawsuit against the rector and vestry of Christ Church to a judgment.)

That separate lawsuit sought to establish personal liability on the part of the rector and vestry members for the $1 million-plus which the Diocese and ECUSA claimed they had spent of the Church’s funds on defending the principal lawsuit. Under the Dennis Canon trust (which purports to apply to all personal, as well as to the real, property of a parish), the parish’s money could be used on legal matters only as long as Christ Church Savannah remained in the Diocese of Georgia. Once it voted to leave, the claim was that it had to keep all pledge money and other donations accumulated up to that point in trust, for the Diocese, pending the outcome of the lawsuit. But since the rector and vestry had voted to use that money for legal defense, the Diocese wanted them personally to pay it all back.

So that was a huge burden lifted from their backs. And in order to induce them to settle before the Court could act on their petition, the Diocese and Bishop Benhase reduced their other demands, as well. They agreed that the parish could form a new corporation and call itself “Christ Church Anglican”; they agreed to assume a mortgage which Christ Church had placed on its property, and in exchange for surrendering the endowment funds (which could not be used for current expenses anyway), the Diocese asked only that they turn over $33,000 of the cash that was on hand when they voted to leave. (That amount is the same as the amount they would have had to use to pay off the mortgage, if the Diocese had not agreed to assume it.)  Finally, the Anglican parish retained the rights to one of their major ministries—an annual tour they organize and staff of historic homes of Savannah, which is an important source of donations. 

Phil Ashey of the American Anglican Council, who knows the parish and its members well, summed up the result achieved in these words:

This was very difficult for Christ Church Savannah. We should note that after they filed their writ with the U.S. Supreme Court, the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia significantly lowered their demands in such a way that Christ Church Savannah now pays net zero to the diocese, walks away with the name “Christ Church Anglican,” the right to cliam publically their lineage to the first Anglicans in Savannah, their tour of homes ministry in Savannah, and with no further claims on the church or any individual vestry members.

I mentioned above that the Diocese of Georgia had sought and obtained an extension of time within which to file their response to Christ Church’s petition. The parties to the other cases before the Supreme Court have also each sought extensions—the response in the Timberridge case will not be filed until May 9, and the responsive brief in the Bishop Seabury case is not due until May 18. The petitioners then have the opportunity to file replies, after which all the briefs are circulated to the justices for them to take up at one of their Thursday conferences.

However, the last conference scheduled on the Court’s calendar for this term is Thursday, May 31; no conferences are scheduled in June, which is the month the justices use to finish up opinions in all of the cases argued up to that point (not the least of which are the Obamacare appeals). If past practice is any guide, neither the Timberridge briefs nor the Bishop Seabury briefs will be put out for distribution for the May 31 conference (even if the replies are on file by then), because of the backlog of earlier cases already scheduled for that conference. What will most likely happen, then, is that the briefs will be part of the justices’ summer recess packages. They will then take up all the cases briefed in May through August at their first conference of the fall (not yet officially scheduled, but probably on September 27). 

We will most likely not have any idea of whether or not four (or more) justices think the questions raised by the Timberridge and Bishop Seabury petitions are worthy of their attention until the first Monday in October, when the Court officially begins its 2012-2013 Term. And that is why the parties in Christ Church settled. Neither side could afford to wait that long to find out what the Court is going to do. 

[UPDATE 05/04/2012: A reader writes to correct the foregoing—it turns out that there are case conferences scheduled for June, even though they do not yet show up on the calendar at SCOTUSblog, which was my source for writing the above. The original Case Distribution Schedule fixed at the start of the term shows that cases whose briefing is completed by June 4 would expect to be considered at the Court’s last conference of the term, shown as scheduled for June 21. (By Rule 15.5, the Clerk of the Court waits at least 10 days from the filing of the respondent’s brief before distributing all the briefs to the justices—thus the petitioners have ten days to get any reply brief on file, if they want the justices to see it.) With the Timberridge response due by May 9, the ten-day period will be up by May 19, and so the briefs in that case could be distributed as early as May 22 for the June 7 conference, or perhaps May 29 for the June 14 conference. The Bishop Seabury briefs could be sent out to the justices as early as May 29 as well, but perhaps might be held until June 5, for consideration at the June 21 conference.

There is no requirement that the cases be considered at the same conference, although any justice who is interested in them could request it. The Court also sometimes decides to hold over a case brought up at one conference to the next one, and it could do that in order to consider both cases at the conferences of either June 14 or June 21. The only way to know for sure will be to check the docket sheets for each case (linked above, in the discussion about brief due dates). Once the briefs have been distributed for a specific conference, that fact will be shown on the docket sheet for that case.

The results of the justices’ deliberations in conference on Thursdays are typically announced by the clerk at 10:00 a.m. the following Monday. Thus we could know whether or not the Court is going to look favorably on these petitions as early as June 11, or if not, then by June 18 or 25.]

Christ Church Savannah Announces Settlement

It is heartbreaking to see Christ Church drop her appeal but it is certainly understandable. She fought a good hard fight and leaves the field honorably. It is instructive to compare this statement with the one issued by Truro. There is in Christ Church’s publication no hint of friendly cooperation with the revisionist diocese or bishop, no mutual promoting of ministries, no sense that the rector and the bishop consider themselves Christian brothers…just the facts and a clarion clear declaration that Christ Church has no regrets. She stood firm for the truth. She lost her building but won so much more. Well and faithfully done Christ Church.

Savannah: Christ Church Anglican Announces Settlement

May 3, 2012

Christ Church Anglican (CCA) in Savannah, GA has agreed to settle a 4 ½ year legal battle with The Episcopal Church (TEC), and The Episcopal Diocese of Georgia. At the heart of the dispute was a lawsuit against CCA, the Senior Pastor and fourteen members of the 2007 Vestry (Board) including money damage claims by the Diocese against these individuals in excess of $1million. “While we never agreed that our people had any personal liability, we are pleased to see these claims dropped as this threat of personal financial loss has hung over our people for more than four years. These parishioners served as volunteer directors on a non-profit 501-C3 board and made decisions to try to stand for their beliefs and fulfill their duty to protect the non-profit corporation they served,” said John Albert, CCA Senior Warden

In 2007, Christ Church Anglican, established in 1733 and predating the formation of TEC by 56 years and the TEC Diocese of Georgia by 90 years, conducted a congregational vote by which 87% of the congregation supported the Vestry’s decision to disaffiliate from TEC over core theological differences. Subsequently, TEC sued Christ Church Anglican, its pastor, and the 14 individual members of the 2007 board. After the Georgia Supreme Court ruling on November 21, 2011, CCA turned over possession of its three buildings (including the church building on Johnson Square) and the parking lot, all worth in excess of $6 million.

As set forth in the settlement agreement, the Church will adopt the title “Christ Church Anglican.” “We see the addition of ‘Anglican’ to our name as a way of identifying our roots going back to our beginnings in Savannah as a Mission of the Church of England in 1733. God has given us the privilege of living out a truth we have always believed, that the Church is not the building but the people of God. God has blessed us in this struggle, as we have maintained the vast majority of our congregation while adding new members who are excited to be part of a church that seeks to live out its beliefs. Orthodox Anglicanism is alive and well in Savannah and we look forward to a bright future,” commented The Rev. Dr. Marc Robertson, Christ Church Anglican’s senior pastor…more

Jerusalem & The Middle East: The Consecration of a new Area Bishop for the Horn of Africa

PRESS RELEASE
The Consecration of a new Area Bishop for the Horn of Africa within the Episcopal / Anglican Diocese of Egypt with North Africa and the Horn of Africa

In an amazing gathering that brought together bishops and archbishops from the Coptic Orthodox Church, the Greek Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church, the Coptic Catholic Church, and well as representatives of the Grand Imam of Al Azhar, government officials, Ambassadors, prominent writers, and politicians, the Episcopal / Anglican Diocese of Egypt with North Africa and the Horn of Africa celebrated the consecration of The Rev. Dr. Grant LeMarquand as a new Area (Assistant) Bishop for the Horn of Africa.

The Most Rev. Dr. Mouneer Hanna Anis, together with The Rt. Rev. Michael Lewis (Diocesan Bishop of the Diocese of Cyprus and the Gulf), The Rt. Rev. Dr. Bill Musk (Area Bishop for North Africa), and The Rt. Rev. Ghais Abdel Malek (the retired Diocesan Bishop of Egypt) participated in the consecration of The Rev. Dr. Grant LeMarquand.

Many people sent greetings, including The Most Rev. & Rt. Hon. Dr. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Other representatives from around the Anglican Communion attended, including: Archbishop Robert Duncan of ACNA; Bishop Peter Tasker of Sydney; representatives of The Diocese of Singapore and The Diocese of South Carolina (our companion dioceses); The Diocese of Pittsburgh; The Diocese of Tennessee; The Diocese of Texas; the Honorary Chairman and Secretary of the Egypt Diocesan Association in the UK; Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania; The Church Missionary Society, UK; and The Church Missionary Society, Australia.

It was very meaningful to have this consecration on 25 April 2012, on the Feast of St. Mark the Evangelist, the Patron Saint of Egypt, in the presence of the Orthodox churches that were started in the first century by St. Mark. It was also the same day of the consecration of All Saints Cathedral at its present site in Zamalek, Cairo in 1988.

In his sermon, Bishop Mouneer said, “Grant, today you will walk in the steps of St. Frumentius, the first Bishop of Axum in Abyssinia, who was ordained by St. Athanasius, the Patriarch in Alexandria, here in Egypt in the 4th Century. In this tradition, we are consecrating you an Area Bishop for the Horn of Africa.” He added that we “need to be ready to stand firm in the faith we once received from the saints.”

Bishop Mouneer reminded Grant that he “will go to harvest the fruit of the seeds that were sown by many great servants of the Lord, including Bishop Andrew Proud who proceeded you.”

He added that “the church in Africa needs to be grounded in the faith and grow in the knowledge and love of Jesus Christ, so that she can replay the role she played in the first millennium in shaping the Christian mind. As you know, the church in Africa is growing numerically in an amazing way however, there is a great need for theological education and making true disciples.”

It is worth mentioning that since their establishment, both Episcopal Areas (North Africa and the Horn of Africa) within the Diocese of Egypt, are flourishing and growing. The installation of Bishop Grant LeMarquand will take place at St. Matthew’s Anglican Church in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on 27 October 2012, when the church celebrates the Feast of St. Frumentius.

Methodists Reject Motion on Homosexuality (UPDATED)

According to Mark Tooley of the Institute on Religion and Democracy:

This morning at about 10 am the United Methodist General Conference defeated a motion from Kansas minister Adam Hamilton to acknowledge that United Methodists disagree on homosexuality. The motion, co-originated with Ohio minister Mike Slaughter, was defeated by about 53 percent to 47 percent.

Nearly 30 percent of delegates are from Africa, where United Methodism is solidly conservative theologically. Nearly 10 percent come from elsewhere overseas, mostly Europe and the Philippines. Of the 60 percent of delegates who are from the U.S., about one-third are believed to be evangelical. The vote revealed a majority coalition of Africans, U.S. evangelicals, and some other overseas delegates.

The Adam Hamilton motion was considered the strongest attempt to dilute the United Methodist Church’s current stance that homosexual practice is “incompatible with Christian teaching.” The church prohibits same-sex unions and precludes actively homosexual clergy, expecting all clergy to be celibate if single and monogamous if in a marriage between man and woman. Legislative committees last week recommended retaining these current stances.

Almost certainly, after the defeat of Hamilton’s motion, the full General Conference will reaffirm its current teachings on marriage, sexual ethics and homosexuality. The growth of United Methodism in Africa, where there are now over 4 million church members, has helped to ensure that the denomination has not followed other U.S. denominations in liberalizing their sexual standards.

Unfortunately, Mark doesn’t include a text for the motion, or a link, so I’m not sure exactly what this is about (and the United Methodist General Conference web site is awful and unhelpful). As soon as I find out I’ll post it. In any case, this bodes well for the next couple of days worth of action.

UPDATE: According to Art McClanahan, the gay rights forces demonstrated their contempt for democracy as well as their opponents by again disrupting the Conference:

Singing interrupted the resumption of the General Conference on Thursday morning.  Following the rejection of a compromise proposal to acknowledge that the Church is divided in it’s mind on homosexuality and a proposed amendment to paragraph 161.F of the Book of Discipline, supporters of a more inclusive stance remained on the floor of the assembly.  They asked the question, in song, “What does the Lord require of you?”

Bishop Mike Coyner, presiding officer for the second half of the morning, closed the session early because of the continuing witness.

Yeah, Mr. McClanahan probably wouldn’t agree with my characterization of the “continuing witness,” i.e., expression of sore loserdom.

UPDATE: Mr. McClanahan has posted the motion. It would replace the last paragraph of the section of the United Methodist Social Principles that deals with human sexuality. This is the current paragraph:

We affirm that all persons are individuals of sacred worth, created in the image of God. All persons need the ministry of the Church in their struggles for human fulfillment, as well as the spiritual and emotional care of a fellowship that enables reconciling relationships with God, with others, and with self. The United Methodist Church does not condone the practice of homosexuality and consider this practice incompatible with Christian teaching. We affirm that God’s grace is available to all. We will seek to live together in Christian community, welcoming, forgiving, and loving one another, as Christ has loved and accepted us. We implore families and churches not to reject or condemn lesbian and gay members and friends. We commit ourselves to be in ministry for and with all persons.

This is what would have replaced it:

Homosexuality continues to divide our society and the church. All in the United Methodist Church affirm that homosexual persons are people of sacred worth and all are welcome in our churches, but we disagree as a people regarding whether homosexual practices is contrary to the will of God.

The Bible is our primary text for discerning God’s will. We read and interpret it by the light of the Spirit’s witness, with the help of the thoughtful reflections of Christians throughout the centuries and assisted by our understanding of history, culture, and science.

The majority view through the history of the church is that the scriptures teach that same-sex sexual intimacy is contrary to the will of God. This view is rooted in several passages from both the Old and New Testament.

A significant minority of our church views the scriptures that speak to same-sex intimacy as reflecting the understanding, values, historical circumstances and sexual ethics of the period in which the scriptures were written, and therefore believe these passages do not reflect the timeless will of God. They read the scriptures related to same-sex intimacy in the same way that they read the Bible’s passages on polygamy, concubinage, slavery and the role of women in the church.

United Methodists will continue to struggle with this issue in the years ahead as a growing number of young adults identify today with what is the minority view. The majority view of the General Conference, and thus the official position of the church, continues to hold out that same-sex intimacy is not God’s will. We recognize, however, that many faithful United Methodists disagree with this view.

It is likely that this issue will continue to be a source of conflict within the church. We have a choice: We can divide, or we can commit to disagree with compassion, grace, and love, while continuing to seek to understand the concerns of the other. Given these options, schism or respectful co-existence, we choose the latter.

We commit to disagree with respect and love, we commit to love all persons and above all, we pledge to seek God’s will. With regard to homosexuality, as with so many other issues, United Methodists adopt the attitude of John Wesley who once said, “Though we cannot think alike, may we not love alike? May we not be of one heart, though we are not of one opinion? Without all doubt, we may.”

UPDATE: The information I saw about the motion was incorrect, or at least incomplete. I’ve deleted the incorrect version, and replaced it with the correct one. (Hat tip: ABQ Methodist.)

Trayvon and other narratives: smoke and mirrors for activist agendas, bigger government

In today’s American Thinker, Scott Swett unpacks the leftwing activists’ disinformation campaign in the Trayvon Martin - George Zimmerman coverage. There is a ton of detailed insight in the article, much of which will be recognized by long suffering members of mainline denominations.  We’ve had years of this kind of stuff in church newsletters, websites, bulletins, and even pastoral letters and sermons.

Swett gives a warning of what is likely to come in the Florida case, some of which is already out and about:

...the Trayvon campaign will be leveraged to support other objectives, such as:

•Promoting gun control
•Weakening self-defense laws
•Expanding hate crime and hate speech laws
•Supporting reparations and other forms of special treatment for blacks
•Energizing leftist political activism during an election year
•Justifying and encouraging black-on-white violence, civil unrest, and riots

Meanwhile, Sioux Falls just hosted a Civil Rights conference, sponsored by the U.S. Attorney’s office.  The keynote speaker was Judy Shepard, the mother of Matthew Shepard,

“a college student beaten to death in 1998 in Laramie, Wyo., because he was homosexual.”

There’s a “narrative” in action.  Shepard was an out gay man with an accepting family and church.  He was in a pretty nasty bar, looking to score some drugs, and in so doing connected with the two low lifes who killed him.  It is likely that he was tormented and murdered in a situation where a straight victim might have been robbed or at worst slapped around a bit.  But his story has been told and retold until we get his mom’s

“activism on behalf of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community…meant to spread a message of inclusiveness”

All together now, “inclusiveness” is

-LGBT&c marriage
-LGBT&c leadership of churches
-Queer Studies on campus
-Sensitivity training in the workplace

and, as with the likely outgrowths of the Trayvon narrative,

•Expanding hate crime and hate speech laws

The sad human ambiguities of the actual cases, and even analysis of their place in the actual statistics of American crime, pass into the activists’ narrative, and from narrative into public policy that invariably expands the intrusive reach of government to control thought, free association and other rights that America’s founders viewed as God-given, not state-permitted.

Ultimately, a divinely revealed standard of justice is ignored in order to inflict the likes and dislikes of factions and elites on a diverse nation.

“You shall appoint judges and officers in all your towns that the LORD your God is giving you, according to your tribes, and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment. You shall not pervert justice. You shall not show partiality… Deuteronomy 16:18-19 ESV

Why Jesus Must Be Gay

Activists seeking to normalize homosexual behavior in the church argue that it is unfair that married heterosexual couples are able to be “fulfilled” sexually while homosexual people are not. The underlying assertion is that having sex is an inherent part of being fully human - that without an avenue for sexual activity a person is less a person. The greatest obstacle to this argument is Jesus of Nazareth - the perfect human being who was fully man, complete and whole and yet never had sex.

This obstacle is what lies behind the revisionist activist attempts to turn Jesus into John’s lover or Mary Magdalen’s husband. Jesus must be either fully human or completely celibate. He cannot be both.

LGBTIQXYZ Activists Disrupt Methodist General Conference

Moral infants, Che wannabes, and 60s leftovers join together to bang spoons on their high chairs at the United Methodist General Conference while the delegates…leave:

I’m sure this made them feel soooooo much more righteous than the pitiful peons ignoring their little temper tantrum.

(Via IRD.)

The Other ‘Lost Boys’: Muslim Men and Bacha Bazi

Pat Condell is almost as famous for his diatribes against Christians as he is for his diatribes against jihadis and other enemies of the civilized west, but while he saves most of his anti-Christian vitriol for the over-the-top hypocritical and dishonest among us (think Ted Haggard et al), he is not so delicate with Muslims, as the following will illustrate.

Here are two videos which, taken together, connect a number of disturbing dots, and will forever change your impression of Muslim men in the Middle East.

The first clip is Condell, responding to emails from viewers in Saudi Arabia asking him why he’s so critical of their country.

The second clip is a Frontline documentary that aired in April 2010 called “The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan.” It’s an unblinking look at a Middle Eastern custom called “bacha bazi” - loosely translated as “boy play” - in which young boys are bought and sold as sex slaves for the pleasure of older men. The documentary is the product of an undercover investigation in Afghanistan, but the practice is widespread among Muslim men from Pakistan to Egypt.

Sydney Anglican Youthworks Youth Website Wins Webby Award

from Youthworks, here in Sydney, has a fantastic youth website, fervr.net. Fervr has just won the webby award for religious websites, perhaps the foremost worldwide honour in it’s field.

Hailed as the “Internet’s highest honour” by The New York Times, The Webby Awards, presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS), is the leading international award honouring excellence on the Internet. The IADAS, which nominates and selects The Webby Award Winners, is comprised of web industry experts, including media mogul Arianna Huffington, Skype CEO Tony Bates, SHFT.com co-founder Adrian Grenier, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom, mobile-phone inventor Martin Cooper, and Mikael Hed, CEO of Rovio, creators of the Webby Award-winning game app Angry Birds.

Fervr.net is a Christian youth website by Youthworks that publishes daily articles, reviews and videos for 13 to 18 year olds. Its goal is to provide easily-accessible content that is engaging and relevant for teens, stimulating them to think critically and respond thoughtfully to their world from a Christian perspective.

It’s a quite fantastic youth resource. Do yourself a favour and check it out: fervr.net.

Peter Jensen: “The Issues that Face Us”

Audio from a talk given by Peter Jensen from the GAFCON Westminster meeting. Well worth listening to.

Listen here. A clear explanation of where conservatives in the Anglican Communion understand the main faultline to be - not sexuality but something far more important, the gospel itself.

More Stories from the GAFCON meeting

Willie Philip, the pastor of St George Tron in Glasgow (Church of Scotland, Presbyterian), was at the recent GAFCON meeting in London. Here’s his brief comments,

Methodist Debate on Israel Begins (UPDATE: Divestment Loses)

I’m watching the United Methodist General Conference as they debate the first of the resolutions on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Here it is:

We join with Palestinian Christians as well as our Jewish and Muslim brothers and sisters in feeling a deep sense of rootedness to the land that has special meaning for our three religious traditions. We celebrate the diversity of religious customs and traditions throughout the Middle East.
 
Jerusalem is sacred to all the children of Abraham: Jews, Muslims, and Christians. We have a vision of a shared Jerusalem as a city of peace and reconciliation, where indigenous Palestinians and Israelis can live as neighbors and, along with visitors and tourists, have access to holy sites and exercise freedom of religious expression. The peaceful resolution of Jerusalem’s status is crucial to the success of the whole process of making a just and lasting peace between Palestinians and Israelis. 
 
We seek for all people in the Middle East an end to military occupation, freedom from violence, and full respect for the human rights of all under international law.
 
WHEREAS, the prophet Isaiah cautioned against coveting the lands and homes of one’s neighbors: “Ah, you who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is room for no one but you, and you are left to live alone in the midst of the land!” (Isaiah 5:8); and
 
WHEREAS, the continuing confiscation of Palestinian land for construction of settlements and the building of a separation wall violates fundamental human rights, subverts the peace process, destroys the hope of both Israelis and Palestinians who are working for and longing for peace, and fosters a sense of desperation that can only lead to further violence; and
 
WHEREAS, continued and often intensified closures, curfews, dehumanizing check points, home demolitions, uprooted trees, bulldozed fields, and confiscation of Palestinian land and water by the government of Israel have devastated economic infrastructure and development in the West Bank and Gaza, have caused a massive deterioration of the living standards of all Palestinians ... and an increasing sense of hopelessness and frustration; and
 
WHEREAS, targeted assassinations, suicide bombings, and attacks against civilians by both Israelis and Palestinians heighten the fear and suffering of all, and have led to many deaths of Palestinian and Israeli children; and
 
WHEREAS, people in the United States, through their taxes, provide several billion dollars in economic and military assistance to the State of Israel each year, which allows for the building of bypass roads and settlements that are illegal according to the Fourth Geneva Convention;
 
WHEREAS, a number of Israeli and international companies profit from the building and maintaining of Israeli settlements on Palestinian lands in a variety of ways, and many churches and Christians have funds invested in some of these companies; and
 
WHEREAS human rights organizations have documented that private foreign donors, including Jewish and Christian individuals and non-profit organizations, have provided financial support for settlements and that some of these donations are tax-deductible; and
 
WHEREAS, the church continues to work with ecumenical and interfaith bodies to advocate for Palestinian self-determination and an end to Israeli occupation; to affirm Israel’s right to exist within secure borders; to affirm the right of return for Palestinian refugees under international law; to call for region-wide disarmament; to urge Israelis and Palestinians to stop human rights violations and attacks on civilians, such as targeted assassinations and suicide bombings; and to urge the U.S. government to initiate an arms embargo on the entire Middle East region;
 
Therefore, be it resolved, that The United Methodist Church opposes continued military occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, the confiscation of Palestinian land and water resources, the destruction of Palestinian homes, the continued building of illegal Jewish settlements, and any vision of a “Greater Israel” that includes the occupied territories and the whole of Jerusalem and its surroundings. 
 
We also affirm the call by our Palestinian Christian sisters and brothers, in their “Kairos Palestine” document (December 2009), for an end to military occupation and human rights violations through nonviolent actions. 
 
Be it further resolved, that we urge the U.S. government to end all military aid to the region, and second to redistribute the large amount of aid now given to Israel and Egypt; to support economic development efforts of nongovernmental organizations throughout the region, including religious institutions, human rights groups, labor unions, and professional groups within Palestinian communities.
 
The United Methodist Church requests that all governments, especially that of the United States, to work cooperation with the United Nations, to urge the State of Israel to:
 
1. cease the confiscation of Palestinian lands and water for any reason;
2. cease the building of new, or expansion of existing, settlements and/or bypass roads in the occupied territories including East Jerusalem;
3. lift the closures and curfews on all Palestinian towns by completely withdrawing Israeli military forces to the Green Line (the 1948 ceasefire line between Israel and the West Bank);
4. dismantle that segment of the Wall of Separation constructed since May 2002 that is not being built on the Green Line but on Palestinian land that is separating Palestinians from their land and farmers from their fields.
     
We also urge the Palestinian Authority and all Palestinian religious leaders to continue to publicly condemn violence against Israeli civilians and to use nonviolent acts of disobedience to resist the occupation and the illegal settlements.
 
We further call on all nations to prohibit:
 
1. any financial support by individuals or organizations for the construction and maintenance of settlements;  and
2. the import of products made by companies in Israeli settlements on Palestinian land. 
       
We ask all companies that profit from and/or support settlements through their business activities to examine these and stop any business that contributes to serious violations of international law, promotes systemic discrimination or otherwise supports ongoing military occupation. 
 
The United Methodist Church does not support a boycott of products made in Israel. Our opposition is to products made by Israeli companies operating in occupied Palestinian territories. 
 
We urge all United Methodists in the U.S. to:
 
1. advocate with the U.S. administration and Congress to implement the aforementioned steps;
2. urge the U.S. government to examine the role played by donations from tax-exempt charities in support of discriminatory and other illegal aspects of Israeli settlements, and develop recommendations to ensure that tax-exempt funds do not support settlements and other violations of international law.
       
We urge all United Methodists to: 
 
1. read and study the “Kairos Palestine” document,“A moment of truth: faith, hope and love from the heart of Palestinian suffering,” written by Palestinian Christians, and take up its call for nonviolent actions seeking an end to military occupation.
2. encourage members of each congregation to study the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from all perspectives by inviting speakers to church events, reading books, using audio-visual resources in educational forums, and getting information from Web sites. We especially commend the 2010 British Methodist Church study, “Justice for Palestine and Israel” that includes a call “on the Methodist people to support and engage with [a] boycott of Israeli goods emanating from illegal settlements,” as well as a call for nonviolent actions issued by several Annual Conferences.
3. provide financial support to the Palestinian people through contributions to the General Board of Global Ministries;
4. support, and participate in, the work of international peace and human rights organizations, such as the Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine & Israel and Christian PeacemakerTeams, to provide protection for Palestinians and Israelis seeking nonviolently to end the occupation; and
5. reach out to local synagogues, mosques, and Christian faith groups by engaging in interfaith and ecumenical dialogue on how nonviolent ways to promote justice and peace in the Holy Land; and
6. That the General Board of Global Ministries, working together with the General Board of Church & Society and interfaith organizations, develop advocacy packets for use in local congregations to promote a just and lasting peace and human rights for all in the region.

The committee chair is making his final statement after a desultory and unenlightening debate—three for, three against. He’s holding up a map that you’ll find here, put out by leftist supporters of the Palestinians, that is patently wrong. He’s also mischaracterized it. What a pathetic excuse for debate on an important issue. And they voted to support this. I’ll look more closely at this later.

This is being followed up by a discussion of the main resolution on divestment. A member of the committee that passed it is speaking and offering the rationale for the changes. She’s then opposed by someone who contends that engagement will make no difference, a fellow who glosses over Palestinian violence by saying that 70% of Israeli Jews want to end the occupation, and that 51% would end it today if there was a Palestinian renunciation of violence. But of course there hasn’t been one! The fact that some favor non-violent action rather than violence doesn’t change the actual dynamics. Debate from the floor follows.

Lay delegate from Western North Carolina: we should divest because Rachel Corrie stepped in front of a bulldozer and was killed for her impertinence. Heaven help us.

Lay delegate from Texas: Divestment has the effect of punishing the makers of products, rather than those who misuse them. Also makes the point that the only ones even potentially hurt by divestment are the beneficiaries of the pension and other funds of the denomination.

Vote on substituting the original call to divest from Hewlett-Packard, Caterpillar, and Motorola for the resolution approved by the committee: 307 yes, 614 no. That means, as one tweet from a delegate put it seconds later, “divestment goes down in flames.” And if the Twitter feed from GC (completely dominated by liberals and anti-Israel activists, from the look of it) is any indication, there are heads exploding in multiple locations around Tampa and across the leftist world.

UPDATE: I have got to include some of these tweets:

hawkiiiii: #GC2012 So sad…where’s the prophetic voice for justice and human rights? Someone please take these Zionists to Palestine!

revmelissa: RT @pastorbecca: So for clarity, #gc2012 doesn’t support occupation of Palestine on principle, but does with money. At this point, such hypocrisy is expected.

TheoDramatist: RT @jabulani1125: #GC2012 As UMC clergy, I can no longer allow my pension 2 support occupation of Palestinians. Will u join “Not with my Pension!” Campaign?

pancakedrawer84: @sfoles but the state of Israel, like the us, is based off of stolen land and the murder of native peoples.Some are more culpable.

JareerKassis: RT @samioj: There’s nothing “complicated” about a system that discriminates and oppresses an entire people.

Oh, and as they begin the debate on the majority report, the first speaker compares Israel to Nazi Germany. Nothing like heading straight for the gutter.

Hospital of Cards

An excellent article from the Mises Institute describing the current US healthcare bubble and why it exists—check out the entire devastating piece, from which the below is excerpted:

America’s healthcare system today can best be described as what economics professor Thomas DiLorenzo has termed “fascialist.” According to DiLorenzo, “Fascialism means an economy is part fascist, part socialist.” Fascism is characterized by private enterprise that is comprehensively regulated and regimented by the state, ostensibly “in the public interest” (as arbitrarily defined by the state). A variant of fascism is crony capitalism. Socialism started out meaning government ownership of the means of production, but it has come to mean egalitarianism promoted by progressive taxation and the institutions of the welfare state. According to DiLorenzo,

The problems of the American healthcare system are caused entirely by the fact that the government subjects the system to massive interventions, some of which are fascist in nature, while others are socialist.

Under the current system, consumers play virtually no role in shaping the pattern of resource use and the assignment of resource rewards. The outputs being produced, the methods of production being employed, and the rewards being given to the various owners of productivity are not dictated by healthcare consumers but rather by government and industry lobbyists, or the medical-industrial complex. This mechanism is directly responsible for inflating the healthcare bubble and costs have grown rapidly to reflect whatever the system will bear.

Prior to Medicare and Medicaid and the significant regulatory changes that have taken place, the healthcare system actually operated under near-capitalist conditions (it was never pure capitalism). I will term this the capitalist period of US healthcare. During this time, individuals paid for the majority of medical goods and services out of their own pockets and utilized health insurance as a rational tool for mitigating financial risk posed by catastrophic events. Although still a relatively new concept, participation in private insurance plans was growing, and by 1960 nearly 75 percent of Americans had some form of private health-insurance coverage.[1]During this period, rapid advancements were being made in pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, and surgical techniques (e.g., the heart-lung machine, which made coronary artery bypass surgery possible). Furthermore, charitable institutions and hospitals often run by religious groups and fraternal organizations such as the Freemasons, whose mission was to take care of the indigent, abounded. Most importantly, the price of medical goods and services remained remarkably stable as measured against the consumer price index (CPI) for all items:

[image]

As figure 2 demonstrates, medical-care price inflation corresponded with the change from the capitalist to fascialist model. The practice of medicine under the current system is less about providing patients with what they value and instead providing them with what is profitable to the medical-industrial complex. The game is rather simple; the outline follows:

Create a new drug, lab test, or device, or find a new indication for an existing product or service.

Sponsor a clinical trial to show that it has a statistically significant benefit for the indication in question.

Hire “experts” in the field to promote it.

Incentivize those experts to influence changes to the traditional “standard of care” through their professional societies.

Hire “lobbyists” who may or may not be the “experts” mentioned above to persuade Medicare to approve the new standard and thus assure coverage by nearly all third-party payers.

This process may seem rather benign, if not beneficial — it may even seem like good capitalism — but it is not. Obscured by this process is the fact that what often passes for “statistically significant” would be viewed by many patients as “clinically irrelevant” and thus not worth near the amount that Medicare or their insurance carrier reimburses. I’m not suggesting that these products and services should not be allowed to come to market. I’m simply suggesting that, given their risk-reduction profiles, under free-market conditions many of them would need to cost much less to be attractive options.

A great example is the drug Rivaroxaban. It has been approved for usage to lower the risk of stroke in patients with atrial fibrillation. However, a recently hyped clinical trial may expand its use significantly. The trial, reported on in the Janurary 5 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, showed that Rivaroxaban, when combined with standard therapy, lowered the absolute risk of death, heart attack, or stroke by 1.9 percent over a two-year period in patients who had recently had a heart attack.[2] To be precise, those taking Rivaroxaban had an 8.9 percent risk while those not taking it had a 10.7 percent risk. Also of note, taking Rivaroxaban increased the risk of a major bleeding event by 1.5 percent (those taking it had a 2.1 percent risk, while those not taking it had a 0.6 percent risk).

Given this information, how much would this drug be worth to you for the above indication, if at all? If your answer is not hundreds of dollars per month then you can appreciate why I believe healthcare is a bubble. The above example is not an exception but rather the rule. Just within my own field of cardiology there are numerous examples (e.g., whether or not to get a stress test and what kind of stress test to do, how often to do an echocardiogram for a patient with asymptomatic valvular heart disease, how often to check cholesterol levels in patients with and without known heart disease, whether to use a stent or thrombolysis to treat an acute heart attack and what type of stent to use, whether to use brand name or generic drugs for blood pressure and cholesterol lowering and when to start these agents in the first place). In my opinion, these few examples demonstrate how and why the healthcare bubble has grown so massive. In almost each case, the standard of care for the particular issue in question endorses more frequent use and the use of expensive agents and modalities over less frequent and less costly alternatives; however, the absolute benefits of the more frequent and expensive options are usually quite small (if they exist at all) as in the case of Rivaroxaban above. These examples demonstrate why government-subsidized healthcare has been a panacea for the medical-industrial complex. But unfortunately, what cannot go on forever must come to an end.

GTS Faculty Hires: Studying the Self in Manhattan

Just opened my latest “Dear GTS Alumna/us” letter.  As always, it is two-sided, single spaced and probably about an 8 to 10 font.  I’m not going to reproduce it and you don’t need the whole thing to know a that…

The place is a business in survival mode: “Our academic programs will foster a collaborative, innovative, project-based model of learning, utilizing the power of technology.  Students and faculty from other traditions will enrich our common life…”  There are lots of summer short courses, seminars and other quick hitters listed: “Evening and Weekend courses will allow part-time students…to take advantage of what General has to offer for both those seeking degrees and those seeking enrichment.”

The place still talks up a national, international and cosmic witness but is all about Manhattan clientele: “linked with two Episcopal Service Corps communities to provide spiritual direction by GTS students to young adults living in New York City… the physical advantages of our surroundings are known to all of you… special worship opportunities for the whole Church and our greater NYC community… our unique opportunities to learn in , serve and engage the City around us…”

What really struck me were the three new faculty hires.  As ever, they are seemingly bright people with plenty of paper credentials, publications and conferences under their belts.  But for an institution that says it wants to “encourage the finest leaders to guide Christian witness and social justice through the challenges facing our Church and the world,” you get

A psychoanalyst:  The Rev. Dr. Amy Bentley Lamborn recently published “The Fourth Reduction:  Carl Jung, Richard Kearney, and the Via Tertia of Otherness.”  And she’s lecturing somewhere about… wait for it…

human sexuality.

A writer:  “...known throughout the academic world and the Episcopal Church as a writer and editor...His various reviews, articles, translations, and original poetry have appeared in journals secular and theological for many years.”

A Lutheran feminist scholar:  “Prof. Shaner’s research interests include… feminist and womanist biblical interpretation… She is an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).”

Look, there’s no discipline from which a church leader, especially a parish priest, can’t gain valuable insight.  But our reliance on rarefied academic subdisciplines, one-to-one clinical style interactions, and factional agendas at the expense of a shared Gospel do not build leaders, at least not leaders for an effective missionary church. 

We continue to “disciple” clergy as chaplains to small, self-referential subgroups.  Such clergy don’t really unify because the groups for which they speak are already unified.  They don’t lead because chaplains, by definition, are in a support role.  They don’t evangelize because they are trained to parrot a message already known and insisted upon by the groups they represent, and bizarre to and excluding those not already in the group.

There must a niche for helping cool folks be all about themselves in Manhattan.  I’m sorry to see my seminary in that niche.
 

AP: Immigrant activists pushed off the “May Day” agenda by, uh, other activists

What a dis to your movement when the mainstream media do a piece on its weakend condition.

The Big Red (and I don’t mean 1st Infantry Div, Nebraska football or chewing gum) event “May Day” went with an undocumented immigrant focus in recent years.  But lo and behold,

In New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Oakland, Calif., May Day protests were dominated by Occupy Wall Street activists, a sign of how far the immigration reform movement has fallen off the radar, unable to compete with the weak economy.

After all, them fer’ners could be coming to take free-to-default student loans from ‘murican kids!  (I need a number to complete the lefty bromide: “Americans are only __% of the planet’s population, yet we consume __% of the student loans.”)

But fear not, THE agenda was on hand,

While a black preacher told about 100 immigration protesters that incarcerated blacks and detained immigrants faced similar challenges, Jesse Morgan stood to one side of the May Day demonstrators, holding a large sign that read “Radical Queers Resist.”

Although the rally was geared toward illegal immigrants, the 24-year-old Georgia State sociology major said gays can relate, too, because they often face discrimination.

Glad the hard left is here to save us from selfish 1% types.

A Child of the North Korean Gulag [Warning: Graphic Descriptions]

Deeply saddening to read this review of the book Escape From Camp 14 in NRO. Perhaps as troubling as the abuse is the difficulty that the escapee experiences in discovering right from wrong, good from evil.

Make certain you read the entire piece, from which the below is excerpted:

It was not a yearning for freedom that prompted Shin’s escape, Harden reports. It was a yearning for “grilled meat,” which Park Yong Chul, a new arrival at Camp 14, described to Shin. Except for an occasional rat, Shin had never eaten meat. Park explained to him as well that North Korea was one of many nations, that its capital was Pyongyang, and that they needed to get to China. He also told the incredulous 23-year-old that the world was round. This was 2005.

Their plan was half-baked and seemingly doomed to failure. For Park, it did end in disaster: He tentatively touched the fence in an isolated area and was instantly electrocuted. The weight of Park’s smoldering body on the wires made a gap in the fence wide enough for Shin to wriggle through, clambering on top of his dead companion. Park’s corpse provided insulation that reduced the force of the electric current, but Shin’s lower legs were nonetheless badly burned. They bled for three weeks.

Shin had escaped at the right time. Famine was an ally. Ten percent of the population of Hamhung, North Korea’s second-largest city, had starved to death. Another 10 percent wandered away in search of food. Even in Pyongyang, the home of the “privileged,” people were found dead of starvation in their apartments. Even in the capital, rice is a precious commodity. When a group of government agents presented Kim Jong Il with duffel bags stuffed with $20 million in cash swindled from Western insurance companies, he rewarded them — with apples, oranges, DVD players, and blankets. They were ecstatic.

When universal malnourishment periodically deteriorates into famine, the government tolerates wandering “traders” who practice “vagabond” free-market principles, and the border with China is less rigorously policed. This proved a boon for Shin, who managed to blend in with the ragged, ill-fed, wandering population. He broke into empty homes and stole clothes, food, and money. Walking and occasionally riding, he covered 370 miles in a month. At the Chinese border, he paid North Korean guards pitiful bribes — cigarettes, candy, crackers — and they allowed him to proceed. He found work with two farmers. A journalist eventually helped him find sanctuary in a South Korean consulate that harbored him for 18 months before officials made arrangements to fly him to Seoul.

Shin’s emotional adjustment to freedom has been painful and difficult. It took him years to experience guilt, which he now feels for informing on his mother and brother. He is in remarkably good health — and he has adapted to the absent last joint of his right middle finger.

It was chopped off with a butcher knife when he was 20, as punishment for dropping a sewing machine.

We Heart Science and Reason

The conservative blogger Allahpundit, himself an atheist, takes apart a bit of “science” presented at a blog called, well, Live Science.

The Live Science piece is entitled “Atheists More Motivated by Compassion than the Faithful.”  Read it once.  Read it twice.  OK, it’s saying that some kind of research shows that atheists are more compassionate than believers, right?

Except that Allahpundit’s piece on Hot Air digs in and shows that it says nothing of the kind.  The statistics in the original article actually show that atheists require compassion in order to give charitably - they need to have strong emotional reaction to a person, cause or situation in order to open their wallets.  Believers are more inclined to give as a discipline.

Allahpundit then opens up other published stats on giving, and lays out the inconvenient truth:

Religious practice by itself is associated with $1,388 more given per year than we would expect to see from a secular person (with the same political views, income, education, age, race, and other characteristics), as well as with 6.5 more occasions of volunteering.

That quote is just a short summary of detailed stats showing “dramatic” differences between religious and secular givers.

First, props to Allahpundit for going where the stats lead, even at the expense of his own team.

More importantly, I continue to say “(Expletive) you” to the brainless mob now claiming, “We’re not a brainless mob like Christians.  We believe in science and reason!”  The science ‘n’ reason crowd are just as ideological and unscientific as anybody they critique, not surprising since so many of them are kids who think the 101 level courses they just took give them unique command of reality.  And judging from the headline at Live Science, their team is not above know-nothing denial and lying in the face of evidence they don’t like.

And since I’m giving props to Allahpundit for honesty, let me be honest and confess that “(Expletive) you” is a failure as a Christian response.  Having a bad day here.

Tutu Tells Methodists What To Do

For Archbishop Desmond Tutu, everything must be seen through the lens of apartheid. It’s not surprising, therefore, that he takes to the pages of the Tampa Bay Times today to try to influence the United Methodist General Conference to see Israel that way as well:

A quarter-century ago I barnstormed around the United States encouraging Americans, particularly students, to press for divestment from South Africa. Today, regrettably, the time has come for similar action to force an end to Israel’s long-standing occupation of Palestinian territory and refusal to extend equal rights to Palestinian citizens who suffer from some 35 discriminatory laws.

I’ve heard this before, but I got to wondering: what exactly are the “35 discriminatory laws” that prevent the Arab citizens of Israel from being full citizens? Here’s a big surprise—I couldn’t find them. I found a variety of lists  of such laws, and a variety of numbers (kind of like Joe McCarthy’s inability to decide just how many Communists there were in the State Department). One of the things I discovered, however, is that among the laws considered discriminatory is the Law of Return, which guarantees any Jew the right to move to Israel and receive citizenship. It was passed five years after the end of World War II, and was meant in the wake of the Holocaust to provide a safe haven for any Jew. I should add that it was passed at a time when Arab nations were expelling hundreds of thousands of Jews from their ancestral homes, places they had lived in for centuries, and was a way to offer welcome to a people who had been made homeless. As far as I know, Tutu has never said a word about those expulsions, or the refugees they created. But the Law of Return is “discriminatory.”

I have reached this conclusion slowly and painfully. I am aware that many of our Jewish brothers and sisters who were so instrumental in the fight against South African apartheid are not yet ready to reckon with the apartheid nature of Israel and its current government. And I am enormously concerned that raising this issue will cause heartache to some in the Jewish community with whom I have worked closely and successfully for decades. But I cannot ignore the Palestinian suffering I have witnessed, nor the voices of those courageous Jews troubled by Israel’s discriminatory course.

I’m not sure why Tutu acts as though this is some great revelation that has burst upon him in recent days. For years he’s been telling anyone who would listen that he considers Israel an “apartheid state.” His concern for the “heartache” in the Jewish community is touching, but ridiculous.

He then refers to the recent appeal by 1200 rabbis to United Methodists and Presbyterians (PCUSA) not to divest from companies doing business in Israel, and goes on:

While they are no doubt well-meaning, I believe that the rabbis and other opponents of divestment are sadly misguided. My voice will always be raised in support of Christian-Jewish ties and against the anti-Semitism that all sensible people fear and detest. But this cannot be an excuse for doing nothing and for standing aside as successive Israeli governments colonize the West Bank and advance racist laws.

Actually, except for perfunctory stuff like this, I can’t recall ever hearing a full-throated, no-holds-barred denunciation of anti-Semitism by Tutu. As for “colonization,” that’s typical of the loaded language anti-Israel activists like to use, but if his point is that that Israeli settlement policy must be reversed, I agree.

I recall well the words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail in which he confesses to his “Christian and Jewish brothers” that he has been “gravely disappointed with the white moderate … who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action;’ who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom. ...”

King’s words describe almost precisely the shortcomings of the 1,200 rabbis who are not joining the brave Palestinians, Jews and internationals in isolated West Bank communities to protest nonviolently against Israel’s theft of Palestinian land to build illegal, Jewish-only settlements and the separation wall. We cannot afford to stick our heads in the sand as relentless settlement activity forecloses on the possibility of the two-state solution.

I appreciate that he still advocates two states, a solution that many of his colleagues in the BDS movement have rejected. His reference to the “separation wall,” however, demonstrates his lack of concern for Israeli security. The “wall” (which is actually not a wall at all for most of its length) was designed to stop Palestinian terrorists from infiltrating into Israel to kill civilians. It has been over 90% successful. For Tutu, however, Israel’s right to defend itself and its citizens from suicide bombers is less important than ensuring Palestinian farmers access to their olive trees. (And for the record, I would rather that the security fence follow the Green Line.)

If we do not achieve two states in the near future, then the day will certainly arrive when Palestinians move away from seeking a separate state of their own and insist on the right to vote for the government that controls their lives, the Israeli government, in a single, democratic state. Israel finds this option unacceptable and yet is seemingly doing everything in its power to see that it happens.

Here is his naivete showing. Polling among Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank indicate that this battle has already been lost, though I believe it has never been otherwise:

Over 60 percent reject “two states for two peoples.”
A one-state Palestinian solution is favored by a majority.
Two-thirds believe the real goal should be to move to a single Palestinian state.
Seventy-two percent think it is right to deny a Jewish presence going back thousands of years in Jerusalem.
Ninety-two percent think Jerusalem should be the capital of Palestine; only 3 percent favor a joint capital.

This is a portrait of rejectionism, which has characterized Palestinian actions if not attitudes almost non-stop for decades. Tutu can deny this, but that’s the reality that Israel has to deal with, even if he doesn’t.

Black South Africans and others around the world have seen the 2010 Human Rights Watch report which “describes the two-tier system of laws, rules, and services that Israel operates for the two populations in areas in the West Bank under its exclusive control, which provide preferential services, development, and benefits for Jewish settlers while imposing harsh conditions on Palestinians.” This, in my book, is apartheid.

As Inigo Montoya so famously said, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” On another occasion, I wrote this about Tutu’s insistence upon using that word to describe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

In South Africa, blacks objected to being banished to “independent” Bantustans; the Palestinians are supposedly desperate for a state of their own (if anything, it’s Hamas and their desire for a single, Judenrein Palestinian state that most resemble the Afrikaaners). In South Africa, it was the state that beat up on its own people; in the Holy Land, the Palestinians aren’t citizens of Israel, but would-be invaders from outside. In South Africa, blacks had no rights to speak of; in Israel, Palestinian Arabs who are citizens—about one-sixth of the population—have all the rights of Jewish citizens, including the right to vote, to be elected to the Knesset, to sit in the government, even to speak out in support of their non-Israeli brethren. In South Africa, the courts facilitated the brutal treatment of blacks; in Israel, the courts protect the rights of Palestinians, even to the point of ordering the government to change many of its policies over the years (it is the Israeli Supreme Court, for instance, not the powerless International Court of Justice, that got the government to make changes in the route the security fence takes, ordering it to avoid as much as possible infringing on Palestinian-owned lands, orchards, and farms).

None of that is to say that Israel is beyond criticism for its policies or their execution, both of which are flawed, sometimes in ways that are morally wrong, whatever their political or legal provenance. It is to say that the effort to label Israeli policies “apartheid” are, like the efforts of others to label Israel a modern Nazi Germany, are both factually incorrect and typical of a mindset that is determined to demonize Israel as somehow uniquely evil, which in turn is indicative of an anti-Semitism that is at least subconscious, if not overt.

These are among the hardest words I have ever written. But they are vitally important. Not only is Israel harming Palestinians, but it is harming itself. The 1,200 rabbis may not like what I have to say, but it is long past time for them to remove the blinders from their eyes and grapple with the reality that Israel becoming an apartheid state or like South Africa in its denial of equal rights is not a future danger, as three former Israeli prime ministers — Ehud Barak, Ehud Olmert and David Ben Gurion — have warned, but a present-day reality. This harsh reality endured by millions of Palestinians requires people and organizations of conscience to divest from those companies — in this instance, from Caterpillar, Motorola Solutions and Hewlett Packard — profiting from the occupation and subjugation of Palestinians.

This is what he’s worked up to, and the amazing thing is that after painting this picture of extraordinary Israeli evil that needs to be confronted, his solution is one that will have no effect whatsoever on the realities of the Holy Land. Even United Methodist Kairos Response (UMKR), in their talking points document, affirms this:

6. This is not a call for divestment from Israel. It is a request to be sure we are not investing in companies from any country that keep the occupation going. 

7. This action will not harm the economy of Israel. Taking specific international companies out of our portfolios will not harm the economy of Israel, but it will send a strong message in support of justice and peace in the region.

8. This action will not harm investors.

What this effort is really about is 1) making a political statement; and 2) giving activists the opportunity to proclaim their righteousness. I’ve long thought that South Africa was persuaded to abandon apartheid because of the pressure of economic sanctions and international (i.e., nation-state) isolation, rather than private citizens and even institutional investors divesting from private companies. Activists such as UMKR admit that the companies in question have not listened to them, or taken their concerns seriously, and I suspect that the act of selling their investments to others will make no more difference to HP or Motorola than denominational resolutions or meaningless meetings with political activists. Yet this is what Tutu brings out what he considers the rhetorical big guns to support. OK.

Speaking of those big guns, one other thing. He says, “These are among the hardest words I have ever written.” Once again, he suggests that he’s never gone this far before, but the circumstances require him to go farther than before That’s patent nonsense. As I document here, here, and here (he’s very explicit here), Tutu has been talking this way for years. Hopefully no United Methodist General Conference delegates will be taken in by either the faux-sorrow or the inflammatory language the Archbishop employs.

Steve Brown on Crucifixion and Death [It’s Not As Bad As It Sounds!]

Steve Brown is a PCA minister and heads up Key Life. Once a month I receive a free audio sermon from one of his travels, and every quarter or so a very nice color magazine with great content. These materials are free for the asking—no charge.  Plus his 15-minute daily broadcasts are heard on radio stations all over the US.

His latest letter was a helpful reminder to me; I’ve spent a lot of time in my life trying to “do fruitful” rather than be fruitful. Steve also has a fair degree of cynicism about pastors—heh—I suppose because he was one once!

It started with my devotional reading of John 12:23-26 where Jesus said: “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.”

That sounds like a major downer. And it sounds like a marvelous text for a preacher wanting to motivate people in the church to be more missional—to serve, to give, to sacrifice, and to change the world. I get that, but it doesn’t work and, in fact, isn’t what Jesus said at all.

I once heard a chapel speaker at Reformed Theological Seminary talk about missions. I’m not going to tell you his name, but he used this text in a very harsh and condemning way. Among other things, he said to students worried about their cars needing repair, “Who promised you a car?” To students worried about health insurance, “Who said that God owed you health insurance?” To those with no money, working day and night just to get by and feed their families, “God didn’t promise you a rose garden. Who said that you would have money?”

It went on and on.

Once the students were “eating dirt” because they felt so guilty and ashamed, he asked them to stand before God and the student body, committing themselves to missions. A bunch of students stood.

I didn’t.

Can you believe that? I wanted to jump up and yell, “You know something? You’re a twit!” and then walk out. Given that I needed the job, was a professor, and sat on the front row, I remained silent.

Jesus didn’t say those words in John to shame us—to make us feel so guilty that we would live in obedience, be nice, be sacrificial and finally be involved in missions. Instead, he gave his disciples some very good news. A seed doesn’t decide to die and to work hard at it. A seed is cast to the ground, dies, and then produces a harvest. When Paul said he was crucified with Christ, he wasn’t telling us something we needed to do; he was defining who we are.

Jesus said that we are seeds—insignificant, generally dirty and weak seeds—and in losing our lives, we would be free.

Crucified people are dangerous. They don’t have anything to prove and they never have to pretend. They just show. Because of Christ, they know what is important and what isn’t. They don’t have to look good, be famous, impress anybody or win races. Seeds are seeds and they grow. It’s their very nature. I don’t know about you, but that is a relief.

Anti-Israel Forces Suffer Defeat at Methodist General Conference

I wasn’t able to get to this over the weekend, but it seems there were big doings on Israel at the United Methodists’ General Conference on Saturday. The divestment movement, at least temporarily, was derailed.

The call for divestment had been submitted by half a dozen annual conferences and the General Board of Church and Society. Here’s what it wanted:

The 2012 General Conference calls on The United Methodist Church to end its financial involvement in Israel’s occupation by divesting from companies that sustain the occupation. The 2012 General Conference:

•instructs all United Methodist general boards and agencies to divest promptly from Caterpillar, Motorola Solutions, and Hewlett Packard until they end their involvement in the Israeli occupation. These companies have been engaged repeatedly by the United Methodist general agencies, boards and annual conferences on this issue.

•calls on all United Methodist general boards and agencies to immediately engage with other companies in their portfolios that have been identified by researchers in United Methodist general boards and agencies and annual conferences as being involved in the occupation….If these companies do not change their involvement within two years, they should be removed from United Methodist portfolios.

Here’s what that was changed to:

The 2012 General Conference calls on the General Board of Pensions and Health Benefits to explore serious peacemaking strategies in Israel and Palestine including positive economic and financial investment in Palestine.
 
•Asks that all United Methodist general boards and agencies prayerfully consider advocating that all companies formally recognize and adopt into their Codes of conduct the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (also known as the Ruggie Principles) and that the boards and agencies prayerfully consider economic sanctions with companies that refuse to recognize and adopt the Principles.

This change was approved 37-36, and is a significant defeat for the anti-Israel forces. The Church and Society committees at a General Conference generally rubber-stamp whatever the GBCS wants, the real test coming on the floor of the GC. For Jim Winkler and his pals to lose in the committee suggests that their approach will also be rejected by the Conference as a whole. Interestingly enough, neither of the most prominent outside meddlers in Methodist affairs on this issue (the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation and Jewish Voice for Peace) has had anything to say about it. Nor have I been able to find anything from United Methodist Kairos Response or their allies at the PCUSA’s Israel Palestine Mission Network. There’s plenty going on behind the scenes, I’m sure, and I’ll let you know about it as soon as it becomes public.

UPDATE: On another but related note, the IPMN has linked on its Twitter site to a borderline anti-Semite named Ben White, writing at one of IPMN’s favorite sites, Electronic Intifada. White makes the mistake of taking on one of the blogosphere’s finest Zionist voices, Elder of Ziyon, who proceeds to take him apart, and in the process expose the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement for what it truly is. IPMN’s link says: Apartheid apologists respond to BDS with fake concern for Palestinians.” EofZ makes clear just how much of a case of projection this is.

UPDATE: Institute on Religion and Democracy writer Jeff Walton reports that the General Conference will be voting on this item at today’s plenary session. More to come.

UPDATE: Turns out they’ve postponed the divestment vote until tomorrow.

Test of Fire

[Personal] All the Best Things… (Moving On)

...inevitably come to an end.

It was with a very heavy heart that we announced to church this Sunday that we would be leaving at the end of the year. We’ve been umming and aahing about a move for the last 18 months or so and it’s slowly become clear to us that the right thing to do is to look for new ministry opportunities.

Not that we want to leave! St Augustine’s has been our home for 8 1/2 years, ever since we arrived in Sydney from Singapore with Ouldlet #1 a few months away from meeting the outside world and keen to get stuck into study at Moore Theological College. Since then we’ve produced 3 Ouldlets, graduated from seminary, got ordained and settled into full-time word ministry and training. All of it has been brilliant. Hard, but brilliant. The time to speak more fully about all that we’re thankful for is yet to come but for now we look back with nothing but great happiness and forward with not a little sadness that we are leaving behind a body of people that we love dearly, especially at such an exciting time. Church attendance has grown rapidly over the past 4 years, we’ve seen loads of conversions and also Christians strengthened in their faith in and love for Jesus. We may be embarking on a building project next year. In every way I’ve had the enormous privilege of being involved in key moments in people’s lives. All of it is dear and precious to us.

We’re not quite sure yet what next year will hold, or where we will be. We’ve begun to talk to a few people but are by no means decided. We’d appreciate your prayers as we discern where we should go next and, of course, if you have a suggestion then I’d love to hear it. Every minister that God calls to this work has his/her particular set of gifts and skills and we’re keen that ours be used in the best way and to the glory of the God in the Lord Jesus Christ whom it is such a privilege and joy to serve. Where and what that will be, we would also love to know!

I’m also delighted that St Augustine’s have already been able to announce a replacement. My very good friend Lionel Windsor will be here after we leave, which is an answer to prayer in so many ways. First, because I could not think of a finer man to work here. Second because the Windsors have a certain flexibility in transitioning here which means that we can also be flexible in terms of when we leave - so the church will not suffer. Do also pray for Lionel, Bronwyn and their 3 children as they prepare for their transition here.

Proverbs 19:21 Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails.

Slate for Diocese of New Hampshire Bishop Election Includes Practicing Homosexual

The Rev. William W. Rich is one of three nominees on the May 19 ballot. (Diocese of New Hampshire)

The Rev. William W. Rich, a senior associate rector at Trinity Church in Boston and a married gay man, is one of three priests nominated by a Diocese of New Hampshire search committee to succeed Bishop V. Gene Robinson, who is retiring.

About 200 clergy and elected lay delegates will vote by secret ballot in Concord on May 19. The Rev. Adrian Robbins-Cole, president of the Standing Committee, a diocesan advisory board, declined to handicap the vote but speculated most delegates will see the nominees’ sexuality as irrelevant.

The entire article can be found here.. 

Former Integrity Leader Appointed to Head Group that Targets the Unborn

Reverend Knox says of his appointment: “There is no more vital work to be done in this historic moment than stopping the rollback of women’s access to health care and self-determination. Women need more health care resources and options, not less. Young people are a priority for RCRC and we look forward to an expansion of engagement with youth and young adult leaders through our Spiritual Youth for Reproductive Freedom program. Church, temple or synagogue should be the first place people of faith and their families turn when facing difficult decisions about reproductive health. RCRC will continue to lead in providing faith leaders the resources they need to offer responsible guidance and support. I ask for the prayers of all those who care about reproductive justice as I begin this new role.”

Reverend Knox was the founding director of the Human Rights Campaign’s Religion and Faith Program, where he supervised the creation of a national speakers’ bureau that reached more than 10 million Americans monthly and was instrumental in creating a national network of 22 progressive state clergy coalitions. Since 2011, he has been Interim Executive Director of Integrity USA, the voice of LGBT Episcopalians and their allies. He will begin his position at RCRC July 16, 2012.

(Emphasis added)
Really, Mr. Knox?  Does this mean you will stand by the Roman Catholics when they ask for the right to practice their faith as it relates to reproduction?  If so, it would be a breath of fresh air.  Could you ask those folks you are calling on for prayer to include the millions of unborn children that are being killed by the work of RCRC?

Hat tip:  Ralinda

Why North American Anglicans are the Way We Are

In my experience many North American Episcopalians/Anglicans, even from very good orthodox churches, have only a rudimentary concept of what lies between Genesis 1 and Revelation 22 - and, worse, little desire to learn. Here are seven reasons (among many) why we are the way we are:

1. Many life-long Anglicans/Episcopalians have grown up with short devotional/poetic homilies only tangentially related to a biblical text rather than biblical exposition. This has bred a passionless, incurious, passive approach to giving and listening to sermons, engaging in bible study, and reading the bible.

2. Driven by the charismatic renewal movement in the late sixties and the growing severity of doctrinal disputes in the Episcopal Church, many Episcopal leaders began to focus on creating a “spiritual experience” to the exclusion of teaching biblical doctrine and ensuring that people understand what Christians believe and why. This created feeling-focused congregations hungry for mountain-top experiences, too impatient for the long slow work of reading, marking and inwardly digesting the word of God.

3. Many Anglican/Episcopal priests distrust the sufficiency of the word of God for the growth (Mk 4:1-20), health (2 Tim 3:16) and sanctification of the church (Jn 17:17), depending rather exclusively on the liturgy and the sacraments to do the work Jesus assigns to the word. This distrust carries the added benefit of making Sunday morning very easy on the priest. Just go through the liturgy and you’re done. This has created many congregations that consider themselves “eucharistically centered” but in reality have no interest in or desire for God’s self revelation in scripture. The readings and sermon are a prelude to the really important part of worship.

4. Many Anglican/Episcopal leaders and people are “recovering” from very rigid fundamentalist pasts where their heads where packed with lots of scripture but their hearts were left cold. The Anglican/Episcopal church is perceived as a place where these “mature” Christians might go to convalesce. These leaders and people often nurse along a reactionary distaste for exposition, doctrine, and adult Christian education - associating all these things negatively with “fundamentalism”. This has created congregations in which new disciples starve for the lack of milk while those who might nourish and feed them pride themselves on their sophistication and spiritual depth. It is also true that many who believe they learned everything there is to know about scripture while sitting between their parents in a “fundamentalist” church are as ignorant as the converts.

5. In many Episcopal Churches, Sunday school is largely seen as something for children to do while the adults are quaffing coffee and downing powdered donuts in the parish hall. Having gone through Sunday school themselves they imagine that they know all there is to know. This has created a culture in which many Baptized, Confirmed, church-going Anglicans are innoculated against the intellectual demands of continuing in the Apostles’ teaching.

6. Children’s Sunday school (not to mention youth ministry) has been largely reduced to teaching kids to be good and make good life decisions. “Jesus was nice and came to model niceness. Here are some nice things he did. So now let’s all go out and be nice.” This has produced little deists who know some of the more popular bible stories but know nothing of redemption history and see nothing unique about the gospel of Jesus Christ.

7. Many Anglican/Episcopalian priests entered the priesthood because it seemed a good way to “care for people”, entertaining a soft hazy therapeutic vision of their role. This has created a culture in which many priests love their people and many people love their priests but also one in which the prophetic role - preaching repentance, sacrifice, and fidelity to Christ and his word - cannot be embraced without “breaking up the family”. Soft words have created hard hearts. Caring and sharing has left no room for exhortation.

These factors (and others) created an environment ripe for revisionist take-over. By the late 90s Anglicans/Episcopalians had largely lost the ability to measure new ideas biblically. This made it very easy for revisionist sophists to wrest the words “love” and “grace” from their biblical moorings and use them to support non-celibate homosexual ministers and same sex blessings, all the while “sounding” Christian to the untrained ears of many priests behind the pulpit and people in the pews.

Now many Anglicans are moving into a new post-Episcopalian era, rebuilding our congregations after losing property and people to the Anglican wars. But we need to rebuild on much firmer foundations or history will repeat itself. The only way to prevent that from happening is to begin the often painful process of re-catechizing the church from square one.

That will necessarily involve hard work for pastors. In many cases it will mean re-learning the gospel, rediscovering scripture, embracing the hard study exposition demands. It will mean creating adult education programs, teaching bible studies and training bible study leaders, training people to actively listen and engage with scripture as it is preached and rather than waiting to be swept up or entertained from the pulpit. All of this means sacrifice and sweat. 

And it will be divisive work because it will mean demanding a lot from people unused to seeing church as anything more than a comfortable and comforting place to go on a Sunday morning. It will be difficult work because we as leaders have lazily floated along with the tide and have become fearful of making demands on ourselves or the people in our care. Some people will leave because they will not want to go where we lead them. Let them go. Some priests will balk. That’s too bad.  But if we carry the same deathly, vigor-sapping, know-nothing, sacerdotal, “its-all-a-mystery” DNA into the future we can expect desolation and ruin.

California Bill Would Ban ‘Sexual Orientation’ Psychotherapy

From Brietbart.com. 

The bill would explicitly move into law the idea that sexual orientation is not a “disorder, illness, deficiency, or shortcoming.” It also suggests that sexual orientation change is impossible, and poses “critical health risks to lesbian, gay, and bisexual people.”

The crux of the legislation is the definition of “sexual orientation change efforts”:

psychotherapy aimed at altering the sexual or romantic desires, attractions, or conduct of a person toward people of the same sex so that the desire, attraction, or conduct is eliminated or reduced or might instead be directed toward people of a different sex. It does not include psychotherapy aimed at altering sexual desires, attractions, or conduct toward minors or relatives or regarding sexual activity with another person without that person’s consent

Interestingly, this audio tape of hearing reveals that the someone is playing fast and loose with the facts.  The opposition testimony begins at approximately 6:25. 

Magnus Carlsen: The Mozart of Chess

Vladimir Kramnik, former world chess champion and current No. 4, is playing in the first round of the London Chess Classic, the most competitive chess tournament to be played in the U.K. capital in 25 years. Tall, handsome and expressionless, he looks exactly as a man who has mastered a game of nearly infinite variation should: like a high-end assassin. Today, however, he is getting methodically and mercilessly crushed.

His opponent is a teenager who seems to be having difficulty staying awake. Magnus Carlsen yawns, fidgets, slumps in his chair. He gets up and wanders over to the other games, staring at the boards like a curious toddler. Every now and then, he returns to his own game and moves one of his pieces, inexorably building an attack so fierce that by the 43rd move Kramnik sees the hopelessness of his position and resigns.

Sunday Worship - April 29, 2012

Sunday Worship

Sunday, April 29, 2012

The bells of St Andrew’s Church, Hurstbourne Priors in Hampshire - BBC Radio 4

Choral Evensong from Chichester Cathedral recorded on the Feast of St Mark the Evangelist on Wednesday - BBC Radio 3 - available now for a week

Choral services from the chapel of St John’s College, Cambridge [recorded last term and being released over the holiday] and New College, Oxford [new services available next term]

Sermons

Holy Trinity, Brompton Road

All Souls, Langham Place

Their 3,500 sermon searchable archive [including those by John Stott] - no need to log in now

St James the Less, Pimlico

Cathedral Church of the Advent, Birmingham Alabama

The challenges for Anglicans in North America - Presentation by Bishop Mark Lawrence and Bishop John Guernsey at Guildford Diocesan Evangelical Fellowship - Holy Trinity, Claygate

Interview with NT Wright - Christian Broadcasting Association New Zealand on Good Friday

The Wright Stuff - Krish Kandiah

The Historical Trustworthiness of the Gospels - Dr Peter Williams, Tyndale House & Dr Simon Gathercole, Cambridge University - Together for the Gospel Conference

Prayer Resources

Please pray for the persecuted church in Nigeria, Mali, Sudan, China, the 4,000 Falls Church, Virginia congregants about to be expelled from their church, as well as for the safety of Pastor Nadarkhani in Iran from execution for being a Christian

Topical Prayers - Church of England [including a prayer for various countries]

Prayer for the persecuted church - Church of England

Easter Prayers and Devotionals - Lent and Beyond Prayersite

Lord, Teach Us to Pray - Margaret Pritchard Houston - Ministry Matters London

News for Prayer

Nigeria: Bombers Attack Center in Christian Area of Jos, Nigeria - Compass Direct

Mali: Christians forced to flee northern Mali - Christian Today

Sudan: Bible School, Church Buildings Attacked in Sudan - Compass Direct

China: China Plans to Eradicate House Churches - Compass Direct News

Iran: Tweet for Youcef Reaches 1.9 Million Worldwide - ACLJ

Burning Korans will speed up Pastor Nadarkhanis death - Premier Christian News

Pastor burns holy books in protest of imprisoned clergyman - Gainesville Sun

Sunday Program - current affairs with Edward Stourton - BBC Radio 4 - available from 07:10 am BST Sunday

Food for Thought

2,700 young people sign up as community volunteers for Olympics - Christian Today

Sticks and stones? For humans, words do real damage - Tom Chivers - Telegraph

Premier loses court case - Premier Christian News

Jubilee Near You - new website from the Church of England

Christians harnessing Facebook to share faith - Christian Today

Can We Trust The 66 Books Of The Bible? - John Piper - Gospel Coalition

Walking on air - NASA ISS video

All Creatures of Our God and King - BBC

To comment on today’s worship, click here.

Primates of ACNA and Rwanda Issue Joint Communiqué on AMiA

from here

To summarise, Rwanda and the ACNA are more than willing to help resigned AMiA bishops move into the ACNA if they wish, but they must be “Prepared to engage a process of full reconciliation with all parties wounded through the actions of recent months”. Or, more simply still - the ACNA won’t take you unless you go back to Rwanda and say sorry.

A quite excellent response from them.

April 28, 2012

To All Confessing Anglicans in North America: Greetings in this happiest of seasons, when we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ and grow in the knowledge of what it means to live as people who have been “raised up with Christ.” (Colossians 3:1-4)

We have just completed a rich week of blessing and encouragement at GAFCON’s Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans’ Leadership Conference at St Mark’s Church in Battersea, London. We joined 200+ delegates from over thirty nations as we listened to God’s word, worshipped, prayed, studied, and talked. It was deeply encouraging and challenging to share with people who serve Christ faithfully with great sacrifice in the face of revisionist opposition or outright persecution from the unbelieving world. We thank the Lord Jesus for his faithfulness and for the Gospel by which people are being saved and his Church is growing.

While in London, we had the opportunity to talk at length together about the continuing turbulence from the separation of the Anglican Mission in America from its founding church, the Anglican Church of Rwanda. The House of Bishops of Rwanda has recently declared the establishment of a Missionary District in North America (PEARUSA) as its only continuing work on this continent and has offered a deadline of August 31 for clergy and churches to determine their future jurisdiction. There are three options available: remain with Rwanda through PEARUSA, transfer to another Anglican jurisdiction through letters dimissory, or follow the Anglican Mission into its new venture. Provision and procedure for each of these options is available or is being developed as rapidly as possible. (These materials will be available through the www.pearusa.org website as they are developed.)

At the same time, there has been a great deal of confusion recently around the issue of the resigned bishops of the AMiA, their relationship with Rwanda, and their possible relationship with ACNA. We write this communiqué together primarily to address that confusion.

1. Archbishop Rwaje and the House of Bishops of Rwanda have established April 29 as the deadline for the resigned AMiA bishops to declare their intention for future jurisdiction. Having declared their intention, he is willing to work with those bishops seeking letters dimissory to another jurisdiction in the weeks and months ahead.  (April 29 is simply a deadline for declaring intention and direction.)

2. The Anglican Mission is seeking canonical residency in the Church of the Congo, and those bishops and clergy that have applied for letters dimissory to the Congo are being processed according to standard Anglican procedure.

3. Several AMiA bishops have approached the ACNA, through diocesan bishops or directly with Archbishop Duncan, concerning transfer into ACNA. Archbishop Duncan has established a clear path for this process:

  • Following normal transfer process, any bishop seeking transfer must initiate the request with Archbishop Rwaje. He will respond individually to each bishop appropriate to his situation.

  • An AMiA bishop received into ACNA will be received in the following manner:

  o   Graciously and willingly, as the Lord has received all of us, and with the understanding and expectation that God’s love constantly transforms and renews us into the image of Christ

  o   Into a diocese or diocese in formation, that is, through proper ecclesiastical interaction between Rwanda and the diocesan bishop

  o   As an assisting bishop, which does not automatically seat one in the ACNA College of Bishops

  o   Able to give episcopal care to former AMiA churches and clergy that follow them into that diocese, under the blessing of the diocesan bishop

  o   Prepared to engage a process of full reconciliation with all parties wounded through the actions of recent months

In these matters, we are united in heart, soul, mind, and action.

This has been a painful and difficult time for many.  Nevertheless, we are confident that the Lord, in his sovereignty, is building his church, and that the gates of Hell will not prevail against it. We are confident that this will ultimately redound to the Glory of God, in this life and the next. We rejoice at the growing closeness and partnership within the GAFCON provinces and particularly between our respective provinces. We rejoice at our growing joint missionary effort through PEARUSA. We can honestly say that we pray for our brothers and sisters in the AMiA, asking God’s grace to be fully poured out on them and the Gospel to be proclaimed faithfully through them. We pray for further reconciliation and friendship, as the Lord gives grace.

Finally, brothers and sisters, be strong in the Lord and the strength of his might.  Continue to serve the Lord in faith and humility. Pray for us, as we pray for you.

In the love and truth of Christ,

Archbishop Robert Duncan
Archbishop Onesphore Rwaje