...For every human born, ACRES of wildlife forests must be turned into farmland in order to feed that new addition over the course of 60 to 100 YEARS of that new human's lifespan! THIS IS AT THE EXPENSE OF THE FOREST CREATURES!!!! All human procreation and farming must cease! It is the responsiblity of everyone to preserve the planet they live on by not breeding any more children who will continue their filthy practices. Children represent FUTURE catastrophic pollution whereas their parents are current pollution. NO MORE BABIES! Population growth is a real crisis. Even one child born in the US will use 30 to a thousand times more resources than a Third World child. It's like a couple are having 30 babies even though it's just one! If the US goes in this direction maybe other countries will too!...more (if you can bear it)

In his new book he rejects Sir Isaac Newton's theory that the Universe did not spontaneously begin to form but was set in motion by God.

In June this year Prof Hawking told a Channel 4 series that he didn't believe that a "personal" God existed. He told Genius of Britain: "The question is: is the way the universe began chosen by God for reasons we can't understand, or was it determined by a law of science? I believe the second. If you like, you can call the laws of science 'God', but it wouldn't be a personal God that you could meet, and ask questions."

Dear People of Trinity Cathedral,

Over the past several weeks, since my decision to inhibit Dean Linder from the exercise of ordained ministry, I’ve had several conversations with the Dean and his representatives concerning next steps in his ministry as an ordained person in the Church. The inhibition was necessary to prevent division and discord from being spread within the Cathedral community following the Dean’s violation of my pastoral direction to him of July 13th. In my judgment, his violation of that direction risked injury to the health of the Cathedral and your witness to the gospel. It could not be ignored.

His continuing choices not to respond by deadlines mutually agreed upon have caused me to prayerfully consider the most appropriate path forward for the Dean and for Trinity. Several paths have been considered. All of them have ultimately, in my pastoral judgment, led me to the conclusion that the Dean’s status is a pastoral matter between me as the Diocesan Bishop and the Dean as one of my clergy.

Here is where we are today:

- I’ve determined, for the time being, that filing formal disciplinary charges against Dean Linder for violating my earlier Pastoral Direction would not benefit my work with the Dean or further the Cathedral’s ability to move forward in its life and witness to the gospel.

- I have thus removed the inhibition that, effective July 14th, had put this situation into the jurisdiction of the Ecclesiastical Court. Removing the inhibition now allows the vestry to formally act on the call to dissolve the Cathedral’s pastoral relationship with Philip Linder.

- I have issued a new Pastoral Direction, effective August 27th, under which the Dean is still constrained in his priestly ministry and relationship to the Cathedral staff and membership until further notice.

- Charles Davis, Jr., remains Acting Dean of the Cathedral.

These actions will allow me to work directly with the Dean on pastoral issues and will also free the Cathedral vestry to decide what course it will take.

I know that this has been a challenging time for all of you, and yet I am deeply grateful to God for the life that is springing forth among you and for the maturity and wisdom with which you have as a community met these challenges. I ask your continued prayers for the Dean and for his family, acknowledging the strong personal relationships that many of you have with him, formed over the course of his ten years of ministry among you. I remain grateful for the good things that have come from his ministry. I also ask your prayers for the Trinity Vestry and for me as we address the issues before us. As we walk through these challenging times together, I am especially grateful to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, for his guiding presence with all of us. He alone is our hope and refuge.

Your brother in Christ,
The Rt. Rev. W. Andrew Waldo, Bishop
The Episcopal Diocese of Upper South Carolina

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Comments:

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Posted September 02, 2010 at 8:27 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26548/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Matt Kennedy

Newsflash: The Episcopal Church sues local congregation

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And the attempted "legal" property theft continues...

"We have some properties that we thought we'd be willing to hand over, properties with income," Nelson said. "We didn't think we owed them anything, but we thought, for the sake of peace, we'd be willing to pay them something and move on. But we didn't even get to sit down and talk about it.

"They're filing for all the property, all the bank accounts and everything in the church, without any caveat at all," he said. "They want the paper clips and everything."

Lamb acknowledged that the Episcopal diocese is only interested in the return of the church's property — all of it, including the business sites.

"We'll negotiate with anybody about how we can retrieve our property," Lamb said. "The bottom line is, it's our intention to return the property to the Episcopal Church."...more

"Negotiate" = you tell us how and when you will let us steal everything you own.

My favorite part is when a revisionist or an "orthodox" collaborator toddles over to defend stuff like this by appealing to legality. "The law says that we can take your stuff so it must be right." Confiscating serf property and turning it into a collective government farm--forced collectivization--was "legal" under the Bolsheviks. The Nuremberg Laws made all sorts of things "legal". "Legality" is a pitiful rationale for taking things that don't belong to you. It might pass the bar of human judgment but God is not mocked.

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Comments:

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Posted September 02, 2010 at 6:31 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26547/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Matt Kennedy

Dean Robert S. Munday: What Should we Think of Lay Presidency?

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From here

...While the Diocese of Sydney asserts that its position is based on a Gospel imperative,” it does not actually or convincingly demonstrate how that is so. There is also a tendency in the Sydney position to attribute too much to the bogeyman of Anglo-Catholicism and a supposed sacerdotal conception of the priesthood, when all we are really talking about is Church order as it has been traditionally understood by Anglicans and as reflected in the 1552 and 1662 Book of Common Prayer.

...more

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Comments:

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Posted September 01, 2010 at 5:49 pm
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26546/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Matt Kennedy

Treating Friends like Enemies

Anglo Catholics may be wrong, I think they are, but they are not hostile and they are not our enemies nor are they enemies of the gospel. They are friends. And what is more, they are friends who do not insist that evangelicals accept their understanding of the priesthood. The very last thing evangelical Anglicans ought to do at this point is send our warships over their lines. But that is essentially what Sydney proposes to do.

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I continue to be surprised that Sydney continues down the path toward diaconal and/or lay presidency. I’ve said before and I’ll reiterate it here, I see no clear biblical impediment to lay presidency. Nor do I see any biblical reason to deny the authority of any church to limit Eucharistic celebrations to the ordained presbyteriat. To my mind, the absence of clear biblical instruction one way or the other means that the matter must necessarily be considered adiaphora or non-essential.

As such, the two principles to be weighed are “liberty” on the one hand and “charity” on the other. Christians must not allow the liberty of the gospel won by the blood of Christ to die the death of a thousand traditions while at the same time we must not think of our freedom as a licence to trample on the consciences of fellow believers.

The problem from Sydney’s perspective (as I understand it) is that Anglo Catholics do not believe that the sacerdotal priesthood is adiaphora. Regular participation in a validly celebrated Eucharist with validly consecrated elements is necessary, Anglo Catholics believe, for the salvation of souls.

Those writing from the Sydney Anglican perspective on Stand Firm have suggested that the present Communion-wide standard in which only ordained presbyters may celebrate the Eucharist, if left unchallenged, implicitly supports an Anglo Catholic or sacerdotal understanding of the priesthood and thus directly undermines gospel liberty.

Article 20 of the 39 Articles reads:

The Church hath power to decree Rites or Ceremonies, and authority in Controversies of Faith: and yet it is not lawful for the Church to ordain any thing that is contrary to God's Word written, neither may it so expound one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another. Wherefore, although the Church be a witness and a keeper of Holy Writ, yet, as it ought not to decree any thing against the same, so besides the same ought it not to enforce any thing to be believed for necessity of Salvation.

The Communion standard, from Sydney’s perspective (again, as I understand it), to the extent that it reflects an Anglo Catholic sacerdotal understanding of the priesthood forces a “thing to be believed for necessity of Salvation” that is contrary to God’s Word written.

The calculus, then, from Sydney’s perspective seems to be that the cause of gospel liberty in this case outweighs the call of charity.

I disagree for three reasons:

First: There are many Anglicans, and I am one of them, who reject the Anglo Catholic understanding of the priesthood while recognizing that presiding over the Eucharist is an act of headship and as such ought to be reserved for the ordained leadership of a local congregation. I will not argue that case here but I want simply to point out that the Communion standard is no more an implicit endorsement of the Anglo Catholic sacerdotal position than it is an endorsement of the evangelical headship argument. The reason the Communion standard has survived so long is precisely because it can be legitimately embraced by both evangelicals and Anglo Catholics in very good conscience.

Second: Because that is true, what Sydney may perceive to be a grand act against sacerdotalism also stands as a divisive act against fellow evangelicals.

Third: Sydney’s stance toward Anglo Catholicism as represented by the move toward lay or diaconal and lay presidency is the kind of stance generally taken toward an enemies rather than friends.

In the early 80’s Libyan dictator Mohamar Quadafi drew what he called the “Line of Death” across the Gulf of Sidra. The line cut directly through what the United States understood to be international waters. And so the US, correctly I think, instigated a conflict by floating some navy warships right over the “Line of Death” and in the ensuing conflict humbled Quadifi and reopened international sea routes. This was a very good thing. Quadafi was a hostile enemy. It was necessary to confront him and to assert international law.

Anglo Catholics may be wrong, I think they are, but they are not hostile and they are not our enemies nor are they enemies of the gospel. They are friends. And what is more, they are friends who do not insist that evangelicals accept their understanding of the priesthood. The very last thing evangelical Anglicans ought to do at this point is send our warships over their lines. But that is essentially what Sydney proposes to do.

I certainly agree that resolving question of the nature of salvation and the nature of the priesthood/presbyteriat is a vital and necessary task for orthodox Anglicans. And I pray that my Anglo Catholic brothers and sisters may one day be won over to the evangelical position. But since they are friends and not enemies we should not force this thing down their throats.

If I have misunderstood or misrepresented the Sydney position in any way, and I actually hope that I have, please, Sydney readers, correct me. But as it stands I see no reasonable basis for this action. It is not an assertion of Christian liberty over and against modern day Judiazers but an unnecessary and divisive act with the potential to turn friends into enemies.

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Comments:

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Posted September 01, 2010 at 7:55 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26545/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Sarah

Survey counters backing of gays in military

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Oh dear.

From the Washington Times, where there is more detail:

A group opposed to ending the ban on openly gay troops in the military has released a national survey that challenges earlier independent polls asserting that a wide percentage of Americans favor repealing the ban.

The Military Culture Coalition hopes the survey by a Republican pollster will help persuade moderate to conservative Democrats to oppose President Obama's campaign promise to lift the ban as final votes in Congress loom.

The question is, is the poll too late? The House as well as the Senate Armed Services Committee have passed repeal legislation. That leaves the full Senate vote, a House-Senate conference bill, and then Mr. Obama's signature to end the 1993 law that states that open homosexuality is a threat to combat readiness.

Here is a summary of the key results from the Center for Military Readiness, which is doing yeoman's work on this an other issues. CMR helpfully notes this in a recent email newsletter:

Just before the August recess, Senate Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) blocked an attempt by SASC Chairman Sen. Carl Levin (D-IL) to require a vote on the defense authorization bill, which contains legislation to repeal the 1993 law. . . .

Sen. McCain Blocks First Attempt to File Cloture on Bill Turning Military Into Social Experiment
LGBT activist rights groups are pressuring Congress to take up the bill quickly—before the Pentagon’s review and survey of the troops are complete. The main reason is political—they want legislative action before the mid-term elections, while Democrats still have majorities. This is an irresponsible way to make policy affecting our military men and women, who deserve better. Sen. McCain will need 41 votes to continue blocking efforts by Senators Harry Reid and Carl Levin to bring the defense policy (not appropriations) bill to the floor. Information on how to reach your state’s U.S. senators during the August recess is here:

Senators of the 111th Congress

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Comments:

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Posted August 31, 2010 at 1:34 pm
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26542/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Sarah

Blogging Note

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Commenters/Readers,

I've bumped a couple of helpful posts on the Sydney issues from 2008. The comments on both are instructive. Note in particular the exchanges between David Ould, Boring Bloke, William, and To All The World [Robert Munday]. The comments in both of those posts make for a good education.

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Posted August 31, 2010 at 8:46 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26544/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

David Ould

[Bumped For Obvious Reasons] Anglicanism Upside Down Down Under? Understanding Lay Administration

The move to widen the administration of the Lord's Supper is bound to increase, not decrease, divisions in the Communion. What for Sydney is an imperative of the gospel is seen by others as close to a denial of it. Still, if we are to have this discussion it is better to have it as well-informed as possible as to what it is exactly that our opponent believes. I trust this article will work towards that end.

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The question of Lay Presidency of the Lord's Supper has been placed firmly on the global Anglican agenda by the recent motion by the Synod of the Diocese of Sydney. The motion read as follows:

7.2 Lay and diaconal administration

Synod –

(a) accepts the report concerning legal barriers to lay and diaconal administration of the Lord’s Supper which was submitted to the 3rd session of the 47th Synod, and

(b) affirms again its conviction that lay and diaconal administration of the Lord’s Supper is consistent with the teaching of Scripture, and

(c) affirms that the Lord’s Supper in this diocese may be administered by persons other than presbyters,

and requests the Diocesan Secretary to send a copy of The Lord’s Supper in Human Hands to all bishops who attended the GAFCON.

and was passed overwhelmingly. Subsequently the Archbishop made it clear that he would not consider licensing laity to administer communion, out of respect to those that objected. Thus we are now at the position where the Diocese of Sydney approves of Diaconal Administration.

Almost as soon as the news got out there were strong responses. Perhaps the most concerned were GAFCON partners who saw the move as a serious breach in Anglican order. A clear example would be the following from Peter Toon of the Prayer Book Society of the USA:

...what the Diocese of Sydney has recently re-affirmed and confirmed as its public doctrine stands in total opposition to the doctrinal and public stance of GAFCON.

This is, quite clearly, an issue where Anglicans are divided - and divided where, previously, they had stood together.

So what has moved the Synod of Sydney to take this decision, knowing that it would upset and even offend many of their global partners - partners that only months earlier they had work so hard to win over? How should orthodox Anglicans all over the Communion understand these actions? What are the convictions that drive the motion and how can it be that evangelicals at Sydney should, in good conscience, pass such a resolution without considering it to be in any way a contradiction of their dearly-held Anglican identity?

This piece is not an apologetic for that decision, although the reader should not be ignorant of the fact that I am broadly in favour of Synod's position - which places me somewhat at odds with my blogging colleagues at Stand Firm. As things stand I am an ordained Deacon in the Diocese and I wait, after the Rector has canvassed the opinion of church members, for my Church Council's approval for me to administer Communion. I am, myself, an object of the current controversy and I realise that even that simple fact causes distress to some of our readers.

Nevertheless, I wanted to spend the time working hard at helping our more "Catholic"-minded friends understand how Sydney had reached this point. I won't pretend to be neutral, rather I intend to set out (to the best of my ability) how we have ended up in this place. Along the way we will tap into some of the deeper debates that have been had in this place and others about the nature of Anglican identity. That cannot be avoided. As John Richardson observed in his recent address to the Lincoln branch of Forward in Faith in the UK,

the ‘farmer’ of Anglo-Catholicism and the ‘cowman’ of Conservative Evangelicalism can, indeed, be friends

while, in the same speech laying out a great number of areas of challenge to his audience. I would suggest that our shared convictions (or, at least our claim to share convictions) should make us eager to listen to each other, particularly on areas of deeper disagreement.

Defining the Issue

What is indicated by the term "Lay Administration"? Are we talking about assistance at Communion, what others may call "distribution"? More than that is intended. When one reads over the legion documents produced in Sydney over this issue, it immediately becomes apparent that presidency at the Lord's Supper is indicated. This terminology is consistent with the 1662 BCP so, for example, in the prayers at Communion you have this:

Give grace, O heavenly Father, to all Bishops and Curates, that they may both by their life and doctrine set forth thy true and lively Word, and rightly and duly administer thy holy Sacraments.

and in the next notice:

EARLY beloved, on ----- day next I purpose, through God's assistance, to administer to all such as shall be religiously and devoutly disposed the most comfortable Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ; to be by them received in remembrance of his meritorious Cross and Passion;

Presidency, including consecration, is obviously in view. Indeed, the service is properly titled "The Order of the Administration of the Lord's Supper".

Legal/Canonical Objections

The question of a legal or canonical objection is not something that can be simply ringfenced from other areas. For our Anglo-Catholic friends church order, including the matter of canons, overlaps heavily with theology. It is not simply a question of whether something is legally or canonically permitted that makes something be in good order. The endorsement of the election of Gene Robinson, for example, did not make the action any more valid.

With this in mind, we must still consider the question of legal objections. This issue was dealt with by the Standing Committe of Sydney's synod back in 1993. The report can be found here. (A number of other relevant reports, going back over 20 years, may be found here. Such a provenance of this position should indicate to the reader a high degree of conservatism, rather than an impulsive rush, in the area of legislating for controversial changes). The report notes that the 1985 General Synod of the Church in Australia passed a canon on the ordination of Deacons. I will let the report make it's own argument:

5. Two notable changes occur in the service. First, the restriction upon the deacon, who could previously only baptise infants in the absence of the priest,[6] is removed so that the deacon may baptise a candidate of any age and do so, if appropriate, in the presence of the priest. Second, the authority to preach, which was previously dependent upon the bishop’s permission is replaced with the bishop’s instruction: “to preach the word of God in the place to which you are licensed.” In other words, the licence to preach, which was not inherent in the BCP service, is now constitutive of the order of deacon.[7]

6. Under the 1985 canon, both of these changes are highlighted in the words of the bishop when he gives the deacon a copy of the New Testament: “Receive this sign of your authority to proclaim God’s word and to assist in the administration of the sacraments.”

7. These changes have been universally recognised as an authorisation of the deacon to preach God’s word and to administer baptism to candidates of any age. In many ways this represented a liturgical catch up as many deacons had baptised candidates other than infants, and the recognition that there are occasions when it is appropriate for a deacon to baptise, notwithstanding the presence of a priest. However, what is curious about the wording of the 1985 service is the explicit inclusion of the holy communion in the deacon’s responsibilities. On three occasions the term “administration” of the sacraments is used in the service, whereas the word “baptism” does not occur at all.

...

11. What pertains to the authority to administer baptism pertains to the authority to administer holy communion. There is no differentiation in the service between the deacon’s authority to administer either sacrament. In both cases the deacon is assisting the priest, whether it be in administering baptism or in administering holy communion.

If Deacons are to assist the Priest in baptism by performing baptisms, argued the report, then surely the same should be accepted for communion - the ordination canon made no distinction between the too. (Remember, at this point we are speaking only to the legal objections). The legal position is founded upon the premise that the Deacon's role has been raised in all areas to that of the Priest by leglislation.

Theological Objections

The Report cited above contains an Appendix, the contents of which are a report by the Doctrine Commission of the Diocese. Again, it would be best to allow them to speak for themselves:

2. Theological Assumptions

2.1 The Doctrine Commission accepts the finding of the 1983 report that the arguments against lay presidency at the Lord's Supper, such as those expressed in the General Synod Doctrine Commission Report Towards a Theology of Ordination, are incorrect, and that "there is no Scriptural or doctrinal barrier to lay presidency".

2.2 Moreover there do exist positive reasons, theological, historical and practical, for allowing lay presidency at the Lord's Supper.

(a) The welcome development of lay preaching ministry over many years has resulted in a distortion of our Anglican order which has, in effect, elevated the Sacrament above the Word in that those authorised to preach are not necessarily authorised to preside (note the words "vice versa" in the 1985 report quoted above). To preserve the balance of Anglican order there is a need for lay ministry of the Sacrament to develop in a way corresponding to lay ministry of the Word.

(b) On the grounds that Jesus Christ alone was the proper sacramentum given us by God (1 Tim 2:3-7; 3: 14-1 6), the 16th century Reformers worked to heal the split between Word and Sacrament endemic to medieval theology and practice. Anglican writers of the period when the formularies were being composed "regarded the ministry of the word and that of the two sacraments as closely bound up together, and were, generally speaking, entirely free from those sacerdotal conceptions which put the ministry of the eucharist in a class by itself" (i) While the question of lay presidency at the Lord's Supper hardly arose in this period, this was because lay ministry was generally only envisaged in cases of necessity or "highly remote theory".[ii] Normally a layman could neither preach nor administer the sacraments. Where opposition to lay presidency was expressed, it was in terms of the general argument propounded by Calvin, which was based on the concept of those "called and authorised" to each and administer the sacraments."[iii] The main stream of Anglican writers did not apply Calvin's argument narrowly, as can be seen in their views of lay baptism, and, at least theoretically, of lay preaching. The development of Anglican lay ministry generally in more recent times has likewise not accepted a restricted application of Calvin's principles of order to modern church life. We have recognised that lay people too may be "called and authorised" for various ministries. However the separation we now see between preaching and sacraments was inconceivable to the Reformers. This separation has developed in the climate created in Anglicanism by the theology of the 19th century Tractarian movement which reverted to pre-Reformation views of Church and ministry.[iv]

(c) It follows that the role of presiding at the Lord's Supper should not be elevated above the role of presiding when the congregation of God's people gathers for prayer and the hearing of God's Word. This is not a diminution of the importance of the Lord's Supper: it is, rather, a recognition of the importance of every gathering of God's household. At the centre of every such assembly must be the word of Christ, the gospel of Jesus Christ and him crucified. We have rightly recognised that the headship of Christ over his household allows for any suitably mature and gifted member of the congregation to be authorised to preside at Morning and Evening Prayer (see the conclusion to the 1983 Doctrine Commission Report, 1.1 above). It follows that the prohibition of lay presidency at the Lord's Supper is today a serious inconsistency, which has distorted Anglican order as envisaged in our formularies (see (d) below).

(d) The anomaly of churches, schools, colleges which have regular Anglican ministry, but must bring in an outside priest on certain occasions in order to conduct the Lord's Supper suggests the "Mass priest" concept rightly rejected by our forebears.

(e) When lay people are permitted to share in every form of ministry except one in the regular meetings of the congregation, except one, the impression can be given that the prohibited thing is the essence of ordained ministry. A sacerdotal view of the priesthood is difficult to avoid. Again this is a distortion of Anglican order due to the welcome developments in lay ministry which have not however been matched in the ministry of the Sacraments.

It has been suggested to me that it is worth considering the original intent of much of the order put in place durning the 16^th Century Reformation. Why, for example, were only some Priests licensed to preach their own sermons whereas all were licensed to preside at Communion? The answer, of course, is that Cranmer had provided the words for Communion, whereas sermons came from the Priest's own pen. Hence the need for homilies.
This action was not to raise the Sacrament over the Word and its preaching but, rather, to protect what Cranmer clearly saw as of first importance - the preaching of the word of God. He was obviously no sacerdotalist.

Of course, we now have (particularly in Sydney) a situation where not only the clergy but much of the laity are theologically literate and competent. We are, rightly, licensing many men to preach. We have ended up with a situation where what was previously prioritised and reserved (the preaching of the word) no longer needs to be whereas that which could not be so readily abused and was previously not so constrained (the sacrament) is now more restricted. This is, surely, contrary to Cranmer's original intention. His original change was gospel-minded, prioritising and protecting the word of God. Perhaps, some in Sydney are suggesting, another like-minded change is required?

The current Dean of Sydney, Philip Jensen, puts it more simply in his recent piece "Traditions Old and New":

There is no reason to retain or to dispense with some custom just because it is old - anymore than there is any reason to embrace something because it is new. What pleases God is that we put forward the Gospel of Jesus clearly so that His people can understand His ways and respond in obedient faith.

The move from Sydney must be recognised as coming from a sincere (although some may argue incorrectly focussed) gospel imperative.

Anglican Identity

The question of Cranmer's original intent, outlined above, and his understanding of the gospel strike to the very heart of current discussions over the nature of Anglican Identity. Sydney Anglicans would see themselves firmly in the line of those Reformers of the 1500's, who they understand to have be unfeignedly protestant.

This is, of course, where the real fault-line lies. Conservative evangelicals, such as those typically found in Sydney, do not see themselves as bound to tradition as their High Church friends. Indeed, they are more than happy to reject Tradition if they understand it to be contrary to the Scriptures, as they understand Cranmer and his peers felt impelled to do. It is no surprise that Sydney is a place that, while having a very low rate of usage of the Prayer Book, has a very high allegiance to the 39 Articles and the theology of the Prayer Book. It is a strange combination, but perhaps more understandable with reference to Article 34:

XXXIV. Of the Traditions of the Church.
IT is not necessary that traditions and ceremonies be in all places one or utterly alike; for at all times they have been diverse, and may be changed according to the diversity of countries, times, and men's manners, so that nothing be ordained against God's word. Whosoever through his private judgement willingly and purposely doth openly break the traditions and ceremonies of the Church which be not repugnant to the word of God, and be ordained and approved by common authority, ought to be rebuked openly that other may fear to do the like, as he that offendeth against common order of the Church, and hurteth the authority of the magistrate, and woundeth the conscience of the weak brethren.
Every particular or national Church hath authority to ordain, change, and abolish ceremonies or rites of the Church ordained only by man's authority, so that all things be done to edifying.

Many here would look to that Article and see in it a mandate to change traditions and ceremonies so that the gospel be most clearly communicated to the culture in which we find ourselves.

It is not a mystery that much of the opposition to Lay Presidency from those who would be more generally included in the "orthodox" camp comes from the "Higher" church Anglo-Catholics - those who look not to Cranmer but Laud, Pusey and, of course, Newman for their identity. This, of course, is an issue we have discussed in this place before. Readers will be under no illusions as to where I stand on the matter but perhaps I might quote again from Richardson. His words may be better received as "wounds from a friend", or at least serve to outline the nature of the evangelical objection:

...the Anglo-Catholic must face the fact that many things precious to the tradition are, in fact, at odds with the formal position of the denomination. The onus is, therefore, on the innovator to justify their position.

Above all the Anglo-Catholic must, if progress is to be made, demonstrate the coherence of his own position within Anglicanism.

As I have stated, this is a place where the 39 Articles are taken seriously. The consitution of the Australian Church sets the Articles as the standard of doctrine and in Sydney oaths to uphold that doctrine are said and believed.

Drawing Lines?

I do not think it would be too much to state that a frank response from many in Sydney who accuse them of innovation with their move to Lay Presidency would include a challenge to consider who the real innovators were. That is not to say that in Sydney there is great antipathy amongst the leadership to Anglo-Catholicism. On the contrary. Peter Jensen worked hard at GAFCON to build as many bridges as possible. Back here in Australia he joined with Anglo-Catholics in forming the "Association for Apostolic Ministry" in response to the consecration of women bishops.

Nevertheless, the move to widen the administration of the Lord's Supper is bound to increase, not decrease, pre-existing divisions in the Communion. What for Sydney is an imperative of the gospel is seen by others as close to a denial of it. Still, if we are to have this discussion it is better to have it as well-informed as possible as to what it is exactly that our opponent believes. I trust this article will work towards that end.

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Comments:

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Posted August 31, 2010 at 8:46 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/17979/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Matt Kennedy

[Bumped For Obvious Reasons] Church Times: Sydney Votes for Diaconal and Lay Presidency

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Why do this now?
from here

...The motion was passed un­amended, and, the Sydney diocesan website reported, “overwhelmingly”. It read:

Synod —

(a) accepts the report concerning legal barriers to lay and diaconal administration of the Lord’s Supper which was submitted to the 3rd session of the 47th Synod, and

(b) affirms again its conviction that lay and diaconal administration of the Lord’s Supper is consistent with the teaching of Scripture, and

(c) affirms that the Lord’s Supper in this diocese may be administered by persons other than presbyters, and requests the Diocesan Secretary to send a copy of The Lord’s Supper in Human Hands to all bishops who attended the GAFCON.

...more

Personally, while I understand the biblical arguments and grant that they have merit (though I do not entirely agree), I think this is a disastrous decision. How can we criticize TEC for taking steps beyond agreed upon standards when we turn and do the same?

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Posted August 31, 2010 at 8:45 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/17283/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Sarah

Bishop of San Diego Merrily Permitting SSUs

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[Hat tip: CW]

Just putting it on the record -- for the future. ; > )

A few weeks ao, Canon Allison, sub-dean of the Cathedral of St. Paul in San Diego CA, made the wonderful announcement from the pulpit that the bishop had now given the Cathedral the go-ahead to celebrate same-sex marriages/blessings. She preached a grand sermon, using a few of the ideas you just raised. I would suggest contacting her and asking for a copy of the sermon to be emailed!

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Posted August 31, 2010 at 7:10 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26540/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Sarah

Closing Out A Sunday Evening: Sunday Worship at St. Patrick’s Church of Ireland Cathedral

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Simply beautiful music, not to mention a nice talk about the meaning of Christian music.



Find the text of the program here.

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Posted August 29, 2010 at 6:42 pm
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26539/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Sarah

[Sunday Afternoon Refresher] Time For Three Cute Dog Videos

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This one is fun . . . I have enjoyed watching my cat Charmer "stalk" Brand. Both of them watch the other play with whatever toy with some envy or simple bemusement.



This is a quite amazing and harrowing thing -- I don't know how the dog knew to get the other dog out of the road. Not something I would have thought them capable of figuring out.



This is still one of my favorite Husky Singing videos, in part because one can almost see the baby thinking "wait -- horrors! -- somebody else has stolen my thunder!!"

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Posted August 29, 2010 at 1:31 pm
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26537/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Sarah

[Off Topic] Refusing to Name the Enemy

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[Hat tip: Prophet Micaiah]

A very good piece from American Thinker, where there is more:

On September 11, 2001, extremists hijacked four American airliners, crashing them into New York City's World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. The tragedy resulted in 3,000 Americans dying.

Does the above paragraph sound strange, deliberately vague, misleading (i.e., "politically correct") -- like a misrepresentation of what actually happened on that fateful Tuesday morning? If so, then for the last nine years, America -- from presidents and other politicians to Pentagon officials -- has been engaged in an exercise of obfuscation and verbal gymnastics. And, of course, the leftist establishment media (aka the "mainstream media") have willingly gone along with the above deception. Now consider the politically incorrect truth:

On September 11, 2001, nineteen Islamist terrorists from the Middle East -- fifteen from Saudi Arabia -- hijacked four American airliners, crashing them into New York City's World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. This atrocity resulted in 3,000 innocent Americans being deliberately murdered. Many Muslims wildly erupted in joy in Arab and other Muslim countries, carrying pictures of Osama bin Laden, whose terrorist group, al-Qaeda, took credit for the attacks.

To any person with a modicum of intelligence and reasoning skill, the italicizing and boldfacing of certain words, phrases, and sentences are not needed to realize just how different the narrative -- and truth -- sound from each other. For most Americans, the latter paragraph explains concisely what happened on that horrible day, but due to political correctness, such explicit statements have hardly been written or uttered. Indeed, to speak or write of anything with the words "Islam," "Muslim," or "Middle Eastern" in the same sentence with the word "terrorism" was -- and still is -- verboten. Sad to say, the muzzling of the truth comes not only from liberals and Democrats, but from some conservatives and Republicans as well.

Tragically, the cue for the Orwellian doublespeak came from none other than President George W. Bush himself. Just six days after the most deadly attacks ever on American soil, Mr. Bush appeared on September 17, 2001 -- flanked by members of the "moderate" Muslim group CAIR -- at the Washington Islamic Center, where he boldly proclaimed for the first (but certainly not the last) time that Islam is a "religion of peace." President Bush had already been vilified and excoriated by the media and the Muslim world when he borrowed a word from General Eisenhower's speech to his troops on the eve of D-Day. The unforgivable word, and therefore the unforgivable sin, on the part of the president? He used the word "crusade." The fact that General Eisenhower had used the word in regard to the war against Nazi Germany had no effect on Bush's critics. "Islamophiliacs" came out of the woodwork to condemn Bush's "insensitivity." How, pondered these "experts" on Islam, could he use such a word when it had such negative connotations in the Muslim world?

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Posted August 28, 2010 at 9:33 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26521/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Matt Kennedy

CAPA Apologizes to the Church of Uganda for Financial Scandal

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via email

CAPA Apologizes to the Church of Uganda for Financial Scandal

In a 27th August letter to Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi, Archbishop of the Church of Uganda, the Most Rev. Ian Earnest, Chairman of CAPA (Council of Anglican Provinces of Africa), apologized for “embarrassing” the Church of Uganda when CAPA received a $25,000 grant from Trinity Grants (USA) for the All Africa Bishops Conference taking place in Uganda. (Letter is attached.)

In 2003, the Church of Uganda broke communion with the Episcopal Church (TEC) over their unbiblical theology and immoral actions that violated historic and Biblical Anglicanism and tore the fabric of the Communion at its deepest level. At the same time, the Church of Uganda resolved to not receive any funds from TEC.

The 2nd All Africa Bishops Conference was hosted by the Church of Uganda, but the programme and speakers were chosen by CAPA. The Church of Uganda received no outside funding for its role in hosting the 400 Bishops and other participants in the week-long conference. All funds were raised locally within Uganda.

Archbishop Henry thanked Archbishop Ian for acknowledging the awkward position CAPA had put the Church of Uganda in and appreciated his humility and generous spirit in writing.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Communications Department
Church of Uganda
P.O. Box 14123
KAMPALA

Interesting that both CAPA and Uganda seem to put money from Trinity Wall Street and the Episcopal Church in the same category as mob money--taking it is a "scandal".

There is a PDF of the official letter that I working on getting posted. Should be up later this morning.

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Posted August 28, 2010 at 8:25 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26536/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Sarah

[Off Topic] Ray Bradbury at 90

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A beautiful piece from NRO -- I have paused to savor the fourth paragraph excerpted below, but there is more:

As for ethics, they are elemental in Bradbury’s fiction and screenplays, and even in his horror stories (every devotee of ghostly fiction should read his collection of early stories titled The October Country). Moral truths appear not in obvious nuggets, like raisins in a raisin cake, but blended among the basic ingredients. They bespeak Bradbury’s beliefs that human beings are more than the flies of summer — they are in fact made for knowing beauty, truth, and eternity — and that each movement toward political centralization, materialism, sham intellectualism, and needless destruction of the natural environment endangers all that makes life fulfilling and worthwhile, rendering man little more than a trousered ape.

Bradbury long ago made it known that he is no champion of utilitarianism, applied science as a panacea, gadgetry, literature that strikes a mighty blow for progressive causes, or death to the unwanted and unproductive. Long identified as a prophet who foresaw the coming of flat-screen televisions, ATMs, and televised police chases, avidly watched, Bradbury is — to the surprise of many — a despiser of the Internet and e-reader devices, a believer that technology can easily be as much a destroyer as a benefit, and a man who didn’t take an airplane flight until his late ’60s. As he has told many people, he doesn’t even consider himself a science-fiction writer, but a writer of myths, metaphors, and fantasies.

While he is a great advocate for NASA and space travel, his greatest fictional works address the recurrent theme of much of the modern age’s more significant literature: the separation of spirit and imagination from technological achievement and the dangers that attend this divorce. He asks, How much that is homely, lovable, beautiful, and irreplaceably precious will you cast aside for the sake of ease and self-fulfillment? How much wonder will people willfully drain from their lives in the cause of expediency? Such literature can be filled with much gloom in other hands, but Bradbury remains a poet of affirmation.

“The thing that drives me most often is an immense gratitude that I was given this one chance to live, to be alive the one time round in a miraculous experience that never ceases to be glorious and dismaying,” he wrote to his friend Russell Kirk many years ago. He added: “I accept the whole damn thing. It is neither all beautiful nor all terrible, but a wash of multitudinous despairs and exhilarations about which we know nothing. Our history is so small, our experience so limited, our science so inadequate, our theologies so crammed in mere matchboxes, that we know we stand on the outer edge of a beginning and our greatest history lies before us, frightening and lovely, much darkness and much light.”

Where William Faulkner famously wrote that the past is never dead, as it isn’t even past yet, Bradbury would perhaps add that only in the past lies the matrix of mores that make life worthwhile, whether in a spaceship headed to the farthest reaches of the universe, or in quiet Green Town, Ill., modeled after the small Midwestern city where he was born.

To Bradbury, the world of his boyhood in Waukegan must seem sometimes like a pleasant memory of a half-forgotten dream. Despite its flaws (common to any small town or city), it was a world of quiet talks with friends and family members on the front porch in summertime, with dandelion wine for refreshment. And on the Fourth of July, fire balloons: those small baskets of burning light that mount aloft through miles of quietness into the night sky and blend with the stars before disappearing, while grandparents, parents, and cousins stand and watch.

How far we have come since then, as we make our way through the early 21st century with the disquieting sense that something valuable has been lost over the years since the fire balloons disappeared.

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Posted August 27, 2010 at 1:01 pm
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26516/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Sarah

Update: Bishop Benhase says to “wade deep into the waters” with those “with whom we disagree”

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An alert reader -- and Episcopalian from the Diocese of Georgia -- sent me this little gem from Bishop Benhase . . .

“Secondly, there is the gift of koinonia, that wonderful New Testament Greek word that is often translated as “fellowship.” That translation does not do it justice. Koinonia means more than mere fellowship. It means, as St Paul amplified: “to bear one another’s burdens; to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.” So, koinonia insists that we not just tolerate the others in our community with whom we disagree. Toleration has a respectful, but rather arms-length connotation. We rather are called to wade deep into the waters with them, whether those waters be clean and pristine or murky and potentially dangerous. “I have no need of you” is not something koinonia could ever countenance.”

I'm confused.

I thought that clergy of the Diocese of Georgia were to spurn and avoid participating in ecumenical services with those in the Anglican Church in North America.

But Bishop Benhase says we should "not just tolerate the others in our community with whom we disagree. . . . We rather are called to wade deep into the waters with them, whether those waters be clean and pristine or murky and potentially dangerous. “I have no need of you” is not something koinonia could ever countenance.”

Oh, yeh . . . wait . . . I get it. The above admonition just applies to how we conservative Episcopalians are supposed to treat those revisionist leaders -- like, you know, bishops -- in TEC who wish to affirm and bless gay relationships.

Really, this is incredible hypocrisy. What self-serving propaganda for the Georgia Episcopal pewsters!

It's clear by now to me that Bishop Benhase will be "the gift that keeps on giving" -- I'm just hoping I'll be able to keep up.

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Posted August 27, 2010 at 11:04 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26535/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Sarah

[OPEN THREAD] A Little Reflection On Ecclesiastes, Anglitania, and Elsewhere

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I've read these verses before, but was struck anew by them today, particularly as they relate to The Episcopal Church, the Anglican Communion, and even relationships between conservatives and conservatives within Anglitania as a whole.

13This wisdom have I seen also under the sun, and it seemed great unto me:

14There was a little city, and few men within it; and there came a great king against it, and besieged it, and built great bulwarks against it:

15Now there was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city; yet no man remembered that same poor man.

16Then said I, Wisdom is better than strength: nevertheless the poor man's wisdom is despised, and his words are not heard.

17The words of wise men are heard in quiet more than the cry of him that ruleth among fools.

18Wisdom is better than weapons of war: but one sinner destroyeth much good.( Eccl:9:13-18)

What do you think this passage means in the grander scheme? How do you see it applying to our situation as Anglicans [hint: it's not all about the revisionists!]

What other areas -- outside of Anglicanism/TECdom -- do you see this applying? Where does it apply in your life, personally?

I'll be interested in your thoughts.

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Posted August 27, 2010 at 9:46 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26534/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Sarah

[Updated] Jill Woodliff on The Sea of Faith: Where are the religion reporters in the UK?

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[Posted with permission]

[Update: Jill has helpfully provided more information about COE priest, David Hart, and Richard Holloway, the former Primate of Scotland.]

Kudos to Jill Woodliff for asking the right questions about an organization of which Janet Trisk is a member.

One of the more interesting aspects of the recent articles about Rev. Janet Trisk is the paucity of media coverage of the Sea of Faith network.

--The Sea of Faith movement began in 1984 with a book.  Now it has followers on every continent, with three active websites--UK, Australia, NZ. When any religious group besides Islam grows in the United Kingdom, one would think that religion news reporters would take note. 

--By positing that religion is a human creation, the Sea of Faith radically redefines what it is to be a Christian, a priest, and a church. A growing movement that radically redefines a historic institution is by definition a historic movement.

--The Sea of Faith has followers from multiple denominations and other religions. A story about Sea of Faith would attract interest across a broad base of the population.

--According to a 1999 article, the Sea of Faith has 700 followers in the UK, up to 50 of whom are Anglican priests. On the current website, a former Anglican primate (Richard Holloway of Scotland) and Episcopal bishop (John Shelby Spong of Newark) are mentioned.  With a primate, a bishop, and a member of the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion involved in one way or another, it is a movement of considerable influence within the Anglican Communion.

--The Sea of Faith’s involvement in the Anglican Communion raises all sorts of interesting questions. When Richard Holloway was Primus of Scotland, what happened to the membership of his province? What are the markers of vitality associated with Sea of Faith?

--The theology of Sea of Faith proponents plays out in interesting ways. There was a lot of media coverage when Anglican priest David Hart, reportedly a member of Sea of Faith, converted to Hinduism and claimed it didn’t conflict with his Christianity. Anthony Russell, the Bishop of Ely, sent Mr Hart his licence, along with a personal letter, just three months after Mr Hart published a book, Trading Faith: Global Religion in an Age of Rapid Change, in which he writes about his conversion to Hinduism. Hart had not told the bishop about his conversion prior to receiving his license.

I don't see a follow-up article on what happened to Mr. Hart. If he wasn’t deposed, where is the interview with his Bishop explaining why? Is the Bishop of Ely also a member of Sea of Faith? Does the Bishop have no authority to depose him under Church of England canon law? If Hart wasn’t deposed, then why didn’t the House of Bishops depose the Bishop of Ely? The newspapers ran photographs of Rev. Hart burning incense to the Hindu elephant god Ganesh. These are completely legitimate questions about the boundaries of the faith.

--Richard Holloway is a contributor to an introductory book about Sea of Faith, Time and Tide—Sea of Faith Beyond the Millenium. The retired Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church was a speaker at the 2005 UK Sea of Faith National Conference. His musing on the theology of the homosexual blow-job illustrates the range of the thoughts and actions that can result from the Sea of Faith philosophy. Unlike Janet Trisk, a confirmed member of the Sea of Faith, Richard Holloway has no such confirmation of membership. But he was certainly heavily involved in that organization -- again, an organization that promotes the idea that God is not an objective reality but rather a human construct.

--Just who is in the Sea of Faith? We have no way of knowing how many members, their ages, or their religious affiliations. Are they all aging hippies from the 1960’s or are they attracting younger people? Doesn’t the fact that the membership list is secret raise a red flag? Off the top of my head, I can think of no secret religious groups in the U.S., not unless you count the Ku Klux Klan. Over a quarter of a century, have there not been any leaks?

The group has not restricted its activities to the church, either. The old Broadcasting Standards Commission had three members with religious backgrounds, two of whom were known to be Sea of Faith (Richard Holloway and David Boulton). Given that the Sea of Faith is a registered charity, involved in the established church, and in the past, at least, influenced the standards in the broadcasting industry, couldn’t the legal department of a major newspaper seek the membership list under the Freedom of Information Act?

British religion media, this is a fascinating, multifaceted story, and you can do a far better job covering it than a handful of American Googlers on the other side of the ocean. Good luck.

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Posted August 27, 2010 at 6:59 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26524/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

David Ould

John Dickson on Big Errors in the New Atheists’ Arguments

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from here, some excellent work by John Dickson of CPX pointing out some pretty big errors in several well-known New Atheist presentations. John has a point, if such horrendous errors are being made on simple issues, how much can you trust them on the detail?

 

The New Atheists questionable history part 1 from CPX on Vimeo.

 

 

The New Atheist's questionable history part 2 from CPX on Vimeo.

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Posted August 27, 2010 at 2:24 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26533/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Sarah

[Entirely On Topic But You’ll Have To Read It To See] A few theories to chew on

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This is from ESPN and is normally not relevant to Anglitania. This particular article is one of Bill Simmons' irreverent pieces on various sports/culture issues -- only focusing on his theories for inexplicable actions by various people. I've excerpted the theory he offers for why the owner of the Knicks keeps making foolish decisions. The reason why I did so is that what he says applies so beautifully to various TEC leaders that it was just too insightful not to post. Think of the average TEC layperson who's informed enough to keep up as the hapless Knicks fans in the below excerpt. Think of the average revisionist incompetent TEC bishop as James Dolan. You'll smile.

Chewed-On Theory No. 4: "What's wrong with James Dolan?"

When the news broke that Isiah Thomas might be rehired as a Knicks consultant, a New York buddy sent me the following e-mail: "Serious question: Do you think there is something wrong with Dolan? What if it turns out he is mentally ill? Or what if doctors diagnosed a significant social disorder? Do you think Stern would give us our 2012 No. 1 pick back?"

My answer: There's nothing wrong with Dolan. We've seen terrible owners before. Nobody was worse than Ted Stepien. Nobody shredded the size of a team's fan base faster than Peter Angelos. Nobody has inflicted more damage over a longer period of time than Donald Sterling (not even you, Mike Brown). More recently, William Clay Ford and Al Davis sucked the life out of their fans in unprecedented ways. But Dolan's reign of terror is different for this reason: He doesn't seem to understand (or care) that his fan base regards his every decision with genuine terror.

Here's a fun trick: If you know a Knicks fan, go up to him and ask, "Did you hear about Dolan?"

His response, guaranteed: "Oh, no!"

He won't say "Oh, no, what did he do?" Or "Did we make a trade?" Or even "Is he selling?" You asked about Dolan; that means something bad happened. Oh, no. It's a natural instinct when you assume the absolute worst at all times.

After 10 years, you'd think Dolan would have caught wind of this. Maybe read a few scathing columns, heard a few biting radio rants, had a few unpleasant encounters with fans … and, at some point, would have thought to himself, "God, I'm really bad at this, they hate me, I should sell or get help." Maybe nine solid years of losing would have alerted him. Maybe the booing would have tipped him off. Or the empty seats. Or LeBron and Wade fleeing in the other direction. Something. But either it bounces off him, he's mired in abject denial, he doesn't care what anyone thinks, or he's the least self-aware person who ever owned a major professional sports team.

My theory: I think it's the latter. Isiah's aborted re-hiring -- really, one of the five or six worst ideas in sports history, as well as the quickest way an owner could antagonize his beleaguered fan base short of just turning a fire hose on them -- came from a semi-understandable place. Dolan sees himself as an underdog who's been dumped on his whole life, so he identifies with anyone else fitting that category, even if it's a failed sports executive who turned his team into a laughingstock. Still, Dolan's low level of self-awareness can only be compared to little kids. For instance, when we take my 3-year-old to the beach, he takes his clothes off, refuses to put on a bathing suit, then walks around showing everything off for two hours. He doesn't do this maliciously; there's nothing wrong with him. He's just a little boy. He's incapable of feeling awkward or being uncomfortable.

Same for James Dolan. Although you can't say he doesn't care. Dolan's volatile temper has been his signature trait. His employees usually leave on bad terms. He's battled so many people over the years -- including the mayor of New York, his brothers and his father -- that New York magazine once centered an entire profile around that theme. Once fortune turned against the Knicks, Dolan instituted a bizarre media embargo that had employees creeping around in terror like their clothes were bugged. When New York tabloids raked him over the coals during the Anucha Browne Sanders trial, Dolan stubbornly refused to fire the flailing Thomas. He's obstinately loyal to a handful of people and impossible with everyone else. (One person who worked with Dolan told me, "He doesn't just belittle people. That's too soft of a word. 'Humiliate' is more like it.") And when all else fails, he throws a tantrum. Again, sounds like my 3-year-old son.

Why is Dolan like that? Attend prep school or private school for a few years (I did five) and you'll meet a few legacy kids along the way. They can go one of three ways:

A. Driven to follow Dad's footsteps and become just as successful (if not more).
B. Want no part of Dad's footsteps, would rather create their own.
C. Knew their parents would always provide for them, and become screw-ups.

You could sniff out Group A as early as the ninth grade; we knew which ones had their heads on straight and were headed somewhere. Group C was my favorite: lazy and entitled, headed nowhere, but always throwing great parties because their parents were never home. I never blamed the Group C kids for being like that; their parents were usually too busy to care, so they enabled their kids, looked the other way and made excuses for them. But the Group B kids … they were the fascinating ones. They talked a big game, stuff like, "I'm gonna be a teacher," or "What really matters to me is my music." Sometimes they paved their own way and made it; sometimes they didn't. If they failed, either they stayed failures (belatedly moving into Group C), or sucked it up, swallowed their pride and joined forces with Dad.

James Dolan juggled Group B and Group C. Instead of going to college, he pursued a music career (Group B). When it didn't work out, he left two colleges before belatedly getting his communications degree from SUNY New Paltz (Group C). From there, he begrudgingly went to work for his father (Group B) and battled significant drug and alcohol problems (Group C), and then, to his credit, overcame those problems in his 30s. He sailed competitively (classic Group B) before quitting the sport in a rage (ditto), formed his own jazz band and named it "JD and the Straight Shot" (double ditto), then used (and continued to use) his vast resources to give himself every competitive advantage (triple ditto). New York magazine reported that Dolan even "bought a house adjacent to his own in Oyster Bay, converting it to a studio and arranging for band members to fly in on the Cablevision helicopter for practice."

Everything will make sense when you watch JD and the Straight Shot perform. It's the entire Dolan package on display: the entitled legacy kid who formed a band, overpaid the other members since it's the only way they would EVER play with him, thinks he's good and isn't self-aware enough to know otherwise (as this damning interview/song shows). Knicks fans wonder why their franchise careened into NBA hell, why LeBron ran in the other direction, or why anyone could ever think it would be a good idea to rehire Isiah again? Watch that video while ignoring the unintentional irony of the chorus being, "If you can't lie no better than that, you might as well tell the truth." That guy owns the New York Knicks and New York Rangers. He does.

Legacy kids can succeed or fail as sports owners like anyone else, but one thing sets them apart: They inherited their opportunity with, in some case, no real credentials at all. Let's say I retired in 20 years and turned this column over to my son, but he couldn't write and didn't know anything about sports. You would think this was weird. You would make fun of him. You would say, "Why the hell would ESPN employ Simmons' son, isn't this the strangest thing ever?" In the business world, it's par for the course. It happens all the time. As the old saying goes, James Dolan was born on third base and thought he hit a triple.

So when you hear stories like, "When the Knicks finally had their sitdown with LeBron, Dolan started the meeting by reading awkwardly from prepared notes, exactly like Luca Brasi congratulating Vito Corleone at his daughter's wedding" (and by the way, that's 100 percent true), really, you can't be surprised. This isn't any different than the kid in your neighborhood who took over his dad's hardware store -- the one that's been in town for 60 years, the one that everyone loved -- and ran it into the ground. The Knicks are that hardware store. I hate to break it to you. People keep expecting that Dolan will get the hang of owning the Knicks. It's never going to happen. Next time he does something inexplicable, think of him wobbling naked toward some unsuspecting beach couple with a big smile on his face. It will all make sense. Then again, it's just a theory.

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Posted August 26, 2010 at 10:40 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26522/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Sarah

The New ACC Articles: Procedural Issues

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What an utterly corrupt debacle the new purported ACC Constitution's production and approval [sic] has turned out to be.

The ACI connects the dots -- in essence, the ACC has violated its Constitution and its written-down processes in its production of an attempted new Constitution.

Our concerns are only heightened by information suggesting that the ACO may not have followed advice given to it on the necessary procedures for adopting the new Articles. In November 2008 Robert Fordham of Australia, then a member of the ACC standing committee and the “convenor” of its “sub-committee on Constitutional Issues,” addressed the Joint Standing Committee on the status of the new constitution and “what steps have to be taken at this stage.” He advised that the revised draft of the Articles needed to be submitted to the provinces for ratification at that time. He noted that after ACC-13 had approved a draft of the new Articles in 2005 the ACC’s legal advisor, Canon John Rees, had held “extensive discussions” with the UK charity commission and had engaged in “considerable work” to produce a new draft for the February 2008 JSC. At that meeting in February 2008, the JSC then amended the draft further before approving it. Mr. Fordham then states:

The next and final step is to circulate the Constitution in this new format to each of the Member Provinces of the Communion to seek their ratification. For the new Constitution to come into effect support will be required from two-thirds of the 39 Provinces.

This necessary final step is distinguished from previous communications with the provinces referred to by Mr. Fordham in the same memorandum:

The Secretary General sent an Explanatory Memorandum to Primates and Provincial Secretaries in May 2006 seeking their response to each of the ACC-13 resolutions dealing with the Constitution and although many of the Provinces have not replied in writing those that have have been supportive of this proposal and as indicated above the Primates have also given their endorsement.

The Fordham memorandum concludes that:

To summarize, the revised ACC Constitution incorporating two of the three proposals for constitutional change passed by ACC 13 has now been finalized and in accordance with the decision taken at the last meeting of the Joint Standing Committee will now be sent together with a comprehensive explanatory Memorandum to the Provinces of the Communion seeking their ratification. (Emphasis added.)

It is hardly a surprising conclusion that the ratification requirement would apply to the actual text proposed for adoption. Article 10 of the prior constitution required that amendments “shall be submitted by the Council to the Constitutional bodies [provinces].” A plain reading of this provision indicates that the final text should be approved by the full council and then sent to the provinces for ratification, especially when the amendment is an entirely new constitution. It hardly comports with the concept of ratification to suggest that the ratification occurs “in principle” prior to the detailed drafting of the document to be ratified.

There is nothing in the public record, however, to indicate that the recommendation of the Constitutional Issues sub-committee was followed. We are now being told that provincial consents were sought, not in 2008 after the revised draft was prepared, but in 2006, presumably through the memorandum sent out by the Secretary General in May 2006 that Fordham mentions when he reports that “many of the Provinces have not replied” even two and a half years later.

In fact, the account now being given publicly goes straight from the 2005 draft Articles to provincial approvals (finally) in 2009 and only then to the Charity Commission.

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Comments:

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Posted August 26, 2010 at 7:24 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26518/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Sarah

[Off Topic] Study Says Brain Trauma Can Mimic A.L.S.

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What a fascinating article.

From the New York Times, where there is much more:

“If we can create this in laboratory mice, which are easily genetically altered and breed quickly, we can learn about the pathogenesis of this disorder, and then provide treatment,” Dr. McKee said. The consensus among experts is that brain trauma is almost certainly not solely responsible for diseases like this.

Those afflicted probably have genetic factors leading to susceptibility, with concussions serving as catalyst. In that regard, some doctors said, years from now athletes could be tested for the gene that leaves them vulnerable, not unlike how some today check for sickle-cell trait.

The Gehrig Mystery

More than any other American athlete, perhaps even the player who eventually broke his consecutive games streak, Cal Ripken Jr., Lou Gehrig has come to symbolize a commitment to playing every day, especially through injuries. That renown partly derives from well-documented incidents in which he sustained significant concussions but continued to play in ways now known to be dangerous.

The most notable came in June 1934, when, in an exhibition game, Gehrig was hit with a pitch just above the right eye and was knocked unconscious for what was described in news reports as five minutes. (He was not wearing a batting helmet; such protection was not meaningfully introduced in the major leagues until the 1940s or required until 1958.) He was removed from the game.

Despite a headache, a doctor’s recommendation that he sit out and a bump on his head so large that he had to wear one of Babe Ruth’s larger caps, Gehrig played the next day against the Washington Senators to continue his streak at 1,415 games. “A little thing like that can’t stop us Dutchmen,” Gehrig told a reporter, according to Jonathan Eig’s definitive biography of Gehrig, “Luckiest Man.”

In 1924, during a postgame brawl with the Detroit Tigers, Gehrig swung at Ty Cobb and fell, hit his head on concrete, and was briefly knocked out. While playing first base against the Tigers in September 1930, Gehrig was hit in the face and knocked unconscious by a ground ball. He was knocked out again by an oncoming runner in 1935.

Those are the four incidents in which Gehrig’s being knocked unconscious was notable enough to be reported in newspapers. He most likely sustained other concussions that were never noticed or considered meaningful — for example, when he was hit in the head with a pitch during a 1933 game against Washington but continued playing — either in baseball or while serving as a halfback for Commerce High School in New York and later Columbia University.

“Obviously he played in the days before helmets, and he led with his head and with his shoulders, certainly on the football field,” said Mr. Eig, adding that he found no record of brain injuries in news reports of Gehrig’s football career. “On the baseball field he got knocked around a bit because he could be klutzy. Given the barnstorming he did in the off-season and his football career and style, there’s no telling how many additional shots to the head he took.”

Gehrig’s handling of injuries inspired reverence among fans and the news media. Concussions then almost resembled cigarette smoking, in that what is now known to be harmful was in Gehrig’s time considered benign, even charming. An advertisement for Camel cigarettes that filled the back page of Life magazine included various testimonials to “Larruping Lou’s” playing through injuries, including the 1934 incident.

“Another time, he was knocked out by a ‘bean ball,’ yet next day walloped 3 triples in 5 innings,” the ad reads. “Gehrig’s ‘Iron-Man’ record is proof of his splendid physical condition. As Lou says: ‘All the years I’ve been playing, I’ve been careful about my physical condition. Smoke? I smoke and enjoy it. My cigarette is Camel.’”

The End, and Legacy

Gehrig showed the first signs of degenerative motor disease in 1938, when his hands began to ache and his legs and shoulders gradually weakened. Gehrig’s rickety spring training in 1939 indicated to even casual observers that something was quite wrong; after a poor April, on May 2, Gehrig told Yankees Manager Joe McCarthy that he would not play that day against Detroit, ending his streak at 2,130 games, dating back 14 seasons. He rested for a month before seeking some answers at the Mayo Clinic in June.

The diagnosis was amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, then a virtually unknown disease that doctors explained to the public as a form of “infantile paralysis” resembling polio. It had no known cause, and was not described as fatal. Gehrig’s baseball career was immediately over, and two weeks later, on July 4, he was honored at Yankee Stadium in an on-field ceremony between games of a doubleheader.

Speaking through microphones to more than 60,000 hushed fans, Gehrig took the scene and called himself “the luckiest man on the face of the earth” — a remark that quickly symbolized his humility and, of course, just how unlucky the slugger truly was. Gehrig’s once muscular frame, so seemingly perfect that only a few years before he had auditioned to play Tarzan in the movies, quickly deteriorated.

By the time Gehrig died two years later, A.L.S. was already commonly referred to as Lou Gehrig’s disease, a disorder known as much for the player as for the seemingly arbitrary way in which he was chosen to die from it.

The Mayo Clinic retains Gehrig’s medical records but has never disclosed them per institutional policy, a spokesman said. A neurologist who was allowed to inspect them years ago, Dr. Jay Van Gerpen of the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., was not permitted by the clinic to be interviewed for this article.

In considering how Gehrig’s disease could be pinpointed, Dr. McKee of the Boston University group said that if Gehrig had been embalmed, rather than cremated, she theoretically could examine remaining tissue. He might have had A.L.S., like the more than hundreds of thousands of Americans who have had it since, and who have perhaps taken some solace in how such a famous and admirable man as Gehrig had it, too. Or, given his history of brain injuries, Gehrig might have been like Wally Hilgenberg and the growing number of athletes who, as science evolves, stand with increasing company as testimony to concussions’ shocking cost.

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Posted August 25, 2010 at 12:41 pm
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26511/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Sarah

Mid-Week Refresher: The Earth is Yours

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[Hat tip: an Episcopalian up in the Diocese of Southwestern Virginia -- you know who you are]

A little "liturgical post-rock" for our Wednesday from Gungor . . .

The Earth is Yours
Verse 1:
Your voice it thunders
The oaks start twisting
The forest sounds with cedars breaking
The waters see You and start their writhing
From the depths a song is rising

Now it’s rising from the ground

Chorus:
Holy, Holy
Holy, Holy Lord the earth is Yours and singing
Holy, Holy
Holy, Holy Lord
The earth is Yours
The earth is Yours

Verse 2:
Your voice it thunders
The ground is shaking
The might mountains now are trembling
Creation sees You
And starts composing
The fields and trees they start rejoicing.

Now it’s rising from the ground

Bridge:
Now it’s rising from the ground
It’s rising from the ground
Hear us crying out
Hear us crying out

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Posted August 25, 2010 at 11:30 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26515/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Sarah

[Diocese of Georgia] Fear & Loathing From Bishop Benhase—Don’t Hang Out With ACNA Folks, Clergy

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As we've all recognized over the years, it's always helpful to trawl through various diocesan websites just to see what's new out there.

This passage is from the revised Clergy Handbook speedily produced after Benhase was consecrated bishop.

I think it's clear from the quoted passage below from the just how much the Episcopal Apparatchiks of TEC hate, fear, and loathe those ecclesial entities whom they believe to be actual viable competition to their own market. One cannot help but smile at these two fearful, angry little paragraphs.

"Anglican" or "Continuing" Splinter Groups not part of TEC
These groups undermine the geographical authority of the bishop as defined in the Constitution and Canons of The Episcopal Church and observed in historical Anglican practice. Therefore, no clergyperson from these groups may participate in any service of worship, and no joint services may be held with any congregation of the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia. Episcopal clergy of the Diocese of Georgia may not participate in any service held in or by these congregations except with written permission from the Bishop.

Though you may choose to notify the Bishop, attendance at a wedding or funeral held in such congregation, for reasons of previous pastoral or personal relationship, is an exception to this more general statement and requires no such permission.

Just a few fun points.

1) How does ACNA or any other Continuing Anglican entity "undermine the geographical authority of the bishop" any more than the Roman Catholics do? What a preposterously silly assertion -- the only way it could be true is if Benhase is nervous that ACNA might someday subsume TEC. Even I don't think that will happen. All he does with that assertion is reveal his anxiety and insecurity and spite.

2) One must be given another chuckle over a revisionist like Benhase opining about "historical Anglican practice" -- as if the spectacle of blessing two men engaged in sex acts with one another is in any way remotely connected with "historical Anglican practice" other than that of Anglican revulsion and denunciation. We all know that's just a hackneyed phrase that Benhase ripped out of the ether just to try to feebly shore up his ridiculous pronouncement about clergy interacting with His Competition -- and any of his informed flock in Georgia know the same thing and are having a good chuckle over the hypocrisy as well.

3) Does anyone recall the passage in I Kings 12 about King Rehoboam? His subjects come to him and ask him for a lightening of the load his father had inflicted on them -- a little help -- and they will serve him joyfully. Rehoboam takes council from the elders and the young men about how he should respond, and they give him two sets of advice. Whenever I read about bishops like Benhase -- someone who has been nothing but ridiculously autocratic and heavyhanded -- I think of this passage detailing Rehoboam's mistaken answer that he'll be tough and strong and show his subjects who's boss -- and the consequences that followed it.

Three days later Jeroboam and all the people returned to Rehoboam, as the king had said, "Come back to me in three days." 13 The king answered the people harshly. Rejecting the advice given him by the elders, 14 he followed the advice of the young men and said, "My father made your yoke heavy; I will make it even heavier. My father scourged you with whips; I will scourge you with scorpions." 15 So the king did not listen to the people, for this turn of events was from the LORD, to fulfill the word the LORD had spoken to Jeroboam son of Nebat through Ahijah the Shilonite.

Does Bishop Benhase seriously believe that the various clergy and laity of the Diocese of Georgia won't respond to these sorts of things, if only in their lack of attendance, giving, and joyful participation, as well as slow attrition?

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Posted August 25, 2010 at 7:00 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26520/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Sarah

What should have happened: “2008 Bailout Counter-Factual”

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[Hat tip: T19]

Of course, there were plenty of people who said these things back in 2008 -- but to no avail. Americans in majority voted in ignorant, unprincipled buffoons, and now we will suffer the consequences of that.

From Ritholtz, where there is much more:

My disagreement with the Zandi-Blinder report is not its theoretical underpinnings — it is by definition a hypothetical counter-factual. Rather, it is the counter-factual Blinder/Zandi chose to use: “What would the economy look like now if we had done nothing?”

Instead, I propose a better counter-factual: “What if we had done the right thing, instead of nothing — or the wrong thing?”

A quick definition first: The term “counter-factual” is a term of art often misunderstood. The definition of counter-factual is a “what-if” — counter-factuals explore historical incidents by extrapolating an alternative time line:

-What-if Chrysler was not bailed out in 1980?
-What-if JPM was not guaranteed $29B of Bear’s liabilities?
-What if Citi and BofA were put into reorg/receivership?
-What if AIG’s counter-parties were not made whole 100 cents on the dollar?

We don’t have alternative universe laboratories to run control bailout experiments, but we can imagine the alternative outcomes if different actions were taken.

So let’s do just that. Imagine a nation in the midst of an economic crisis, circa September-December 2008. Only this time, there are key differences: 1) A President who understood Capitalism requires insolvent firms to suffer failure (as opposed to a lame duck running out the clock); 2) A Treasury Secretary who was not a former Goldman Sachs CEO, with a misguided sympathy for Wall Street firms at risk of failure (as opposed to overseeing the greatest wealth transfer in human history); 3) A Federal Reserve Chairman who understood the limits of the Federal Reserve (versus a massive expansion of its power and balance sheet).

In my counter factual, the bailouts did not occur. Instead of the Japanese model, the US government went the Swedish route of banking crises: They stepped in with temporary nationalizations, prepackaged bankruptcies, and financial reorganizations; banks write down all of their bad debt, they sell off the paper. Int he end, the goal is to spin out clean, well financed, toxic-asset-free banks into the public markets.

Thus, Bear Stearns is not bailed out by the Fed. Instead, the FOMC chair tells JP Morgan’s CEO “You have 9 trillion dollars in exposure to Bear derivatives. Instead of guaranteeing you $29 billion for a risk free takeover, we will start preparing a liquidation plan for Bear. And given your exposure to them, we best plan one for JPM too. (and if you don’t like that, you can kiss our ass).”

Tough talk, but the outcome would have been much better: JPM would likely have bought Bear anyway, if for no other reason than to prevent someone else from buying them, and forcing JPM into bankruptcy, to pick up their assets for pennies on the dollar. That would have set a much better tone for future bailout expectations, versus the massive moral hazard the Fed created with the Bear bailout.

Lehman? Prepackaged bankruptcy, less disruptive.

AIG ? There never was an implicit government guarantee that all counter-parties dealing with AIG-Financial Products — a giant leveraged structured finance hedge fund hiding under the skirt of the regulated insurer — would be made whole. But the Bush/Paulson/Bernanke bailout created one. Instead, AIG-FP should have been carved out for dissolution/wind down, while the insurer could have continued to exist on its own. AIG would have had the liability for the government’s costs, but the counter parties? They would have gotten zero. If you go to Vegas and shoot craps in the alley way behind the casino, don’t expect the gaming commission to collect your winnings. But that is what we did with AIG.

Fannie & Freddie: Two more crappy banks that should have been wound down. These were publicly traded companies that were guaranteed lower interest rates — not an infinite backing from taxpayers. They should have been wound down like all any insolvent bank. Today, they serve as the mechanism for backdoor bailouts of the rest of the wounded banking sector.

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Posted August 24, 2010 at 2:34 pm
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26519/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Sarah

An Interesting T19 Thread on a New ACNA Bishop

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I though this post over at T19 generated some interesting comments and exchanges, and wanted to pass it on in case any SF readers had not seen it.

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Posted August 24, 2010 at 12:22 pm
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26538/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Matt Kennedy

Daily Nation: African bishops say Anglicans in West strayed from God

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From here

"Today, the West is lacking obedience to the word of God," Reverend Ian Ernest of Mauritius, the head of the Council of Anglican Provinces in Africa, told journalists.

"It is for us (Africans) to redress the situation," he said, adding that he has severed all ties to the Episcopalian churches in Canada and the US that have allowed gays to enter the clergy.

The conference host, the Archbishop of Uganda Henry Luke Orombi, said African leaders would use the six-day meeting to voice the concerns about the "ailing church" to Williams.

"Homosexuality is incompatible with the word of God," Orombi said. "It is good (that) Archbishop Rowan is here. We are going to express to him where we stand. We are going to explain where our pains are."...more

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Posted August 24, 2010 at 1:07 pm
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26532/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Sarah

Your Church’s Apgar: A new way to measure spiritual vitality

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This is an interesting idea -- but I'd view it as more of a supplemental assessment added on to the ASA measurements. See, an Apgar is not actually a "measurement" -- it's a subjective assessment by a human being, and not an objective measurement, as is ASA. ASA is also comparable across the board, and compares apples to apples. While it's true that those apples might sometimes be irrelevant it's still nice to know apples to apples measurements.

Those two factors make an Apgar assessment easy to, um . . . spin. If TEC shifted from ASA measurement to Apgar measurements, as we all know, every parish in TEC would have Apgar measurements of "10" and we'd all be chanting "All Is Well."

Anyway, Apgar assessments are still an interesting concepts -- read more from Christianity Today's Leadership Journal, where there is more:

We need to move beyond measuring churches primarily by attendance. We need a new measure. We need an Apgar score. I'm just crazy enough to propose not just one, but two possibilties.

Virginia Apgar's score measured a baby in five ways. On each, the baby can score either 0 (low), 1 (middle), or 2 (high). To make the five measures easy to remember, some ingenious nurse arranged them so they spell Virginia Apgar's last name:

Appearance (skin color):

0 = blue all over
1 = pink body, but blue extremities
2 = pink all over

Pulse (heart rate):

0 = less than 60
1 = 60 to 100
2 = over 100

Grimace (reflex irritability):

0 = no response to stimulation
1 = grimace or feeble cry when stimulated
2 = sneeze, cough, or pulling away when stimulated

Activity (muscle tone):

0 = none
1 = some flexion (pulling in of limbs)
2 = active movement

Respiration:

0 = absent
1 = weak or irregular
2 = strong

Total the five scores (none of which is size related), and you have a clear indicator of a baby's health: 10 means a baby born in perfect health, though any score from 7 to 10 is generally normal; 4 means a blue baby needing immediate intervention.

What if we created a measure of church vitality that is just as simple? One that is profoundly biblical? One that motivates positive change, independent of size of church or surrounding conditions?

Yes, Virginia, there is a church Apgar score. Actually, here are two.

We might base a "Church Apgar Score" on Acts 2, Luke's proud snapshot of the healthy, bouncing baby church in Jerusalem (see chart above). I reflected on our congregation and gave it an Acts 2 Apgar Score of 6, maybe 7. Other leaders might rate it higher, which is fine with me. The point is not so much the score as the direction, and I think our leaders would agree that in the past few years, we've moved up, praise God.

To view the Acts 2 Church Apgar chart click here. To take this assessment online click here.

If you don't like those categories, another possibility is found in Revelation 2. This Church Apgar offers a different perspective. Here I credit my pastor friend Lee Eclov, who generally lets me pick up the tab for lunch.

He earned several lunches with his brilliant insight, which we publishedonline ("Jesus' Surprising Definition," http://bit.ly/9HpqgF).

He writes: "In the second and third chapters of John's Revelation, in a uniquely direct way, we have the Lord's assessment of health indicators for local congregations."

For a church Apgar, Revelation offers advantages: a larger sample size—seven congregations rather than one—and descriptions of not just church strengths, but also church weaknesses (which sound curiously like our own).

To view the Revelation 2 Church Apgar chart click here. To take this assessment online click here.

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Posted August 24, 2010 at 10:58 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26513/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Greg Griffith

What Does Obama Really Think About Gay Marriage? A Telling Timeline

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Like a rock:

1996: In response to a questionnaire from Outlines newspaper (now part of Windy City Times), Obama, a candidate for the Illinois state senate seat representing the wealthy Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, writes, “I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages." Eight years later, in a letter to Windy City Times, Obama would say that he opposed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) of 1996, calling it “an effort to demonize people for political advantage” that should be repealed...

2004: In an interview with Windy City Times, Obama mentions the religious dimension of the gay marriage debate, says he supports civil unions, and indicates that his stance is dictated in large part by political strategy...

July 2007: At the CNN/YouTube Democratic primary debate in Charleston, South Carolina, Obama discusses interracial versus gay marriage and says that it should be up to individual religions whether they recognize civil unions as marriages...

2008: In an interview with MTV, Obama says he opposes Prop 8, but also gay marriage. Civil unions, the candidate says, are sufficient...

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Posted August 24, 2010 at 7:36 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26528/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Matt Kennedy

26 ways in which doing IT Support is better than being a pastor

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hat tip to Pyromaniacs

1. People come to you for help — instead of assuming that, if you really knew your job, you would intuitively know they needed help, and come to them without being asked.

2. Everyone immediately tells you, to the best of his ability, what his or her actual issue is.

3. Everyone who asks you a question really wants to hear the answer.

4. Everyone who asks you for help really wants to he helped.

5. Everyone who calls you really does want his/her computer to work the very best it can.

6. You and your callers agree that computer bugs and problems are bad, and should be done away with.

7. When you identify viruses, spyware, unwanted popups, and crashes as "bad," and target them for elimination, the folks you help don't accuse you of being harsh and judgmental.

8. Nobody who calls you is actually in love with the computer problems and misbehaviors they're experiencing.

9. When you identify a computer malady you want to eradicate, nobody can wave a book or point to a Big Name who argues that it is actually the latest, greatest "thing" in computers, and should be earnestly sought after, cherished, cultivated, and spread abroad.

10. Nobody who calls you for help thinks that he's hearing a little voice in his heart telling him that what you're saying is just so much smelly cheese.

11. Everyone to whom you give sensible counsel will hear, heed, remember, and follow that counsel — they won't insist on "feeling an inner peace" before doing it...more

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Posted August 24, 2010 at 7:34 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26531/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Matt Kennedy

Sermon: When God says ‘No’

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Here's the text:

So I have a dear believing friend who is terminally ill. I know that Jesus healed many people and that still today, God heals. Jesus promises that whatever I ask for in his name he will give me (Jn 14:14). Jesus promises that when you ask you receive. And so I ask, and I pray, and cry out to God for my friend. And my friend dies. How can I reconcile what I read in Luke 11 about our loving Father who wants to give his children good things, the best things, and the seemingly purposeless suffering and death of my friend?

The only way to make sense of that is to agree with scripture that my understanding of what is good, what is best for my friend, best for me, is skewed; to trust that God loves my friend infinitely more than I do and that somehow in God’s perfect wisdom it was good, it was best, for my friend’s soul that he experience suffering in the body and then to be welcomed into heaven. I come, in other words, to the point where I submit what I perceive in my limited and fallen understanding to be good to the revelation that “God works all things together for the good of those who are called according to his purpose.” (Rom 8:28). God knows what the best is. I don’t.

Jesus found me when I was around 24 years old. Recently I found an old notebook with lists of things I was praying for at that time. They weren’t bad things. A girlfriend. Money. A new car. A better job. Now at that time I tended to treat women as objects and to go out and drink way too much. But very soon after my conversion, I went through a long period of time when women just weren’t interested in me. I couldn’t figure it out. I prayed and prayed. And I was making less money so I couldn’t go out like I used too. So there I was, brand new Christian, with a drinking problem and a sin issue with sex, praying to my Father for money and a girlfriend. “What’s wrong with God?” I wondered. Why isn’t he answering my prayers? Maybe I’m not praying with enough faith? I went to see my pastor at the time. He didn’t know everything I was struggling with but in the course of our conversation he pointed me to the book of James and this passage: “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.” (James 4:2-3 ESV)

Oh.

God is my Father. He will only give me good things. When you pray for something you believe to be good and you don’t get it, the assumption has to be that God in his wisdom knows that you are not ready for it, that he has something better, or that you are desiring or wanting something that will hurt you…that you’re asking for a snake and he wants to give you bread, a scorpion and he wants to give you a fish. It took me years to understand that when Jesus says I’ll give you anything you ask in my name…he’s not saying: “Add the phrase ‘in Jesus’ name’ to your prayers and I’m magically bound to give you what you want.” To pray in Jesus’ name is to pray for things that are consistent with his name—in accordance with his will...more

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Posted August 24, 2010 at 7:05 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26530/

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David Ould

Australian Church Tribunal Opinion on Diaconal Administration: An Inconsistent Ruling?

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We've already reported on the recent Tribunal ruling on this matter. The 2008 Sydney Synod motion which recognises that there is no legal barrier to diaconal or lay administration of the Lord's Supper was ruled as illegal by the Tribunal. Well, technically, they gave their opinion.

The detailed ruling is interesting reading. Available now online [pdf] it is well worth working through. Not least because the Tribunal appears to have switched their reasoning when compared to another recent high-profile case.

First, the opinion sets out the main argument:

28. The submission is that it is legal for deacons to administer the Holy Communion within the Anglican Church of Australia where they have been made deacon under the 1985 Canon which authorises deacons to assist the priest in administering both sacraments.

 

29. Dr Davies fleshes out that submission by saying:-

(1) This Tribunal has ruled that diaconal administration of the Holy Communion is consistent with the Constitution;

(2) This Tribunal has ruled that a General Synod Canon authorising such practice would be required before any diocese could make provision for diaconal administration of Holy Communion;

(3) The 1985 Canon contained a new service for the Ordination of Deacons, which was a radical revision of the Ordinal of the Book of Common Prayer (BCP), alternative to the conservative revision that was published in An Australian Prayer Book (AAPB) in 1978.

(4) The 1985 service departed from the text of both AAPB and BCP with expanded functions for the deacon, notably with respect to preaching and the administration of baptism and Holy Communion.

(5) Unlike the Ordinal of BCP, the deacon's responsibilities were not delineated separately with respect to each sacrament (baptise infants in the absence of the priest; help the priest in the distribution of the Holy Communion), but were coupled together in the expression "to assist in the administration of his holy sacraments", without any further qualification concerning the presence or absence of the priest.

(6) The function of the deacon was thereby expanded to allow the deacon to baptise not only infants, but candidates of any age (regardless of the absence of the priest), although such baptisms would only be conducted under the aegis of the priest, whom the deacon was to assist.

(7) The function of the deacon was also expanded to allow the deacon to administer Holy Communion with the same authority the deacon had to administer baptism, likewise in an assisting capacity under delegation from the priest.

(8) There are occasions when canons have valid legal effects which are not recognised until some time later, as was the case with the change in definition of canonical fitness for bishops in the Constitution. The fact that

the 1985 Canon was not previously recognised as authorising deacons to assist the priest in administering Holy Communion does not override the plain reading of the text of the service, in accordance with the principles of statutory interpretation.

(9) The 1985 Canon satisfies the conditions of the Appellate Tribunal to permit diaconal administration in any diocese which ordains deacons in accordance with the service in the 1985 Canon.

(10) Therefore the Ordination Service for Deacons Canon 1985 of General Synod constitutes an alteration in the ritual or ceremonial of this Church for the purposes of s71(1) of the Constitution of the Anglican Church of Australia in conformity with which a synod of a diocese may make an alteration in the ritual or ceremonial of the Church so as to permit, authorise or make provision for a deacon to preside at, administer or celebrate the Holy Communion.

Trust all that makes sense. The ordination service says that the deacon is the assist in the administration of the sacraments. That has always been understood to include baptism, so why not the Lord's Supper? There is, the argument goes, no distinction made in the canons.

 

Now, this is how the opposing argument is described by the Tribunal's ruling:

36. ...the Supporting Parties put that, not only are there no words in the new service expressly authorising a deacon to preside at the Eucharist, what there is suggests that the new deacon is to take his or her place in the service of Holy Communion. The Supporting Parties suggest that that means the traditional place of the deacon. We agree.

37. The Applicants also do not agree that the 1985 Canon should be construed as expanding the liturgical function of deacons in a radical way as contended by Dr Davies.

The logic is that, the argument from Sydney notwithstanding, the understanding in the Church always was that only a priest would administer Communion. To suggest otherwise would be a "radical expansion".

 

Further, the Tribunal gets really picky about the meanings of words...

57. The Supporting Parties say that it is significant that the words used are “assist in”. Whilst it may be that one can assist X by doing Y when X is not present, this cannot be the case where what is required is that Z assist X in what X is doing. This submission is logically correct.

58. In their reply, the Supporting Parties make the further valid point that there is a real difference between “assist by” and “assist in”. They note that a child may assist his or her father in washing the car, but it is a different matter to say the child assisted by washing the car. In the present context the deacon is to assist in the administration.

59. The Applicants say that one sees the proper sense of the word when one compares the wording of the service for making deacons with the wording of the service for ordaining priests. They say that the clear distinction is made between the priest who is to administer the sacrament in the sense of presiding, consecrating and celebrating and the deacon who is to play a subsidiary role.

60. We cannot see any answer to this submission.

Again, note the argument being made here. As the Tribunal picks through the various legislation and liturgies they are concerning themselves with what they think was originally intended, not with what the legislation might be generously allowed to include, even if not the original intention.

 

And "fair enough" we might say. They must, after all, have a consistent and sustainable way of working this issue through.

 

But here comes the rub. In September of 2007 the Tribunal issued an opinion on whether women could be consecrated as Bishops. The full report may be read here [pdf]. Again, it is fascinating reading, especially given the argument we have seen from the Tribunal above.

 

First, it is noted that previously there was a clear gender requirement...

33. Phillimore deals with the ordination of priests and deacons in a separate chapter from his discussion about bishops. It is here that he states the wellknown propositions about the incapacity of unbaptized persons and women to be ordained. It is pertinent to set out the first two paragraphs of a lengthy passage (p93):

There are only two classes of persons absolutely incapable of ordination; namely, unbaptized persons and women. Ordination of such persons is wholly inoperative. The former, because baptism is the condition of belonging to the church at all. The latter, because by nature, Holy Scripture and catholic usage they are disqualified.

Though an absolute incapacity be confined to these two classes, yet the canon law, having regard to the great importance of the subject, has been careful to prescribe the qualifications, and to set forth the disqualifications of candidates for holy orders. The law enjoins that the candidate be of sufficient age and learning, and of good reputation. That he be not afflicted by any corporal infirmity which would impede the exercise of his spiritual functions, and tend to repel and alienate the laity. That he be born in lawful wedlock. That he be not engaged in secular occupations inconsistent with devotion to the spiritual calling. Disqualifications of this kind constitute what, since the twelfth century, have been canonically termed irregularitates, and may upon sufficient grounds be removed by the dispensation of the bishop. There are irregularitates ex defectu and ex delicto.

34. The context and language of this passage and of the two pages of text that follow show that the author was addressing ordination to the diaconate or priesthood. But, in so observing, I am not suggesting that the various personal disqualifications were inapplicable to the episcopate as a matter of canon law. The contrary is the case because (as Cripps noted) “every bishop prior to his ordination is already an ecclesiastical person” (see also Phillimore p22). I observe below that a gender restriction was an aspect of canonical fitness and that the majority of the Tribunal held in 1991 that the inherited canon law of the Australian dioceses as at 1962 included a prohibition upon a woman being consecrated. (my emphasis)

However, there were subsequent canons (just as there were with respect to the ordination of Deacons). Here is how the opinion takes up these "changes"...

50. The Canon and Bill [of 1995] explicitly altered the Constitution as regards canonical fitness: see their long and short titles and compare the terms of the old and new definitions. Like its predecessor, the current definition purports to be exclusive in its effect (“Canonical fitness means” etc). The language chosen is gender-neutral (“as regards a person”). It is used with reference to a bishop-elect who will doubtless be in priest’s orders. The terms “bishop” and “priest” in the Constitution do not convey any implicit gender tag (see below).

Again, note the flow of the argument. Previously, it was assumed by everyone that bishops could only be male and the canons backed it up. But, now the canons are non-gender-specific.

 

But hang on, isn't this exactly the argument put forward by Bishops Davies above? That the new canons opened up the possibility of a different understanding of Deacons "administering" Communion? On that occasion the Tribunal knocked him back because, remember, even though the language was now looser the original intent was never that Deacons would administer Communion.

 

So, surely, in this prior ruling the Tribunal will go the same way? Granted, the canonical language is looser, but the original intent in this matter was always that bishops should be men and only men. Sure bet, you would think. Well, put your wallet away - you don't want to waste your money.

64. Those who prepare or promote legislation (or any other formal instrument) have the opportunity to frame it in their own terms, but they have no additional control over its interpretation. After all, they are not the lawmakers.

...

69. The Tribunal has also held that the words bishops, priests and deacons in s3 of the Constitution do not import the masculine gender so as to engage some implied prohibition deriving from s74(6) (see Reports of 1980 and 1981; Opinion and Reasons relating to the Ordination of Women (1985); Report and Opinion of the Tribunal on eleven questions (1991)).

...

101. ...

Question 1: Is there anything in the Constitution which would now prevent the consecration of a woman in priests’ orders as a bishop in this Church in a diocese which by ordinance has adopted the Law of the Church of England Clarification Canon 1992?

Answer: As regards diocesan bishops: No, provided that the woman has been duly elected as the diocesan bishop and has had her election duly confirmed in accordance with the criteria for canonical fitness set out in s74(1) of the Constitution.

As regards assistant bishops: There is nothing in the Constitution itself that would preclude the consecration of a woman appointed in accordance with the law applicable in the diocese concerned.

However, such consecration could not take place in a diocese in which the Assistant Bishops’ Canon 1966 is in force so long as it remains in force in that diocese in its present form.

And there you have it. In the matter of Diaconal administration the Tribunal argues original intent against the new looser canons. In Consecration of Women it argued against original intent since the new canons were looser.

 

But, of course, on each occasion it took the position proposed by the more theologically-liberal side of the Australian Anglican Church against the Biblically-conservative Sydney Diocese.

 

General Synod is coming up in September and I will be attending. Sydney Diocesan Synod follows in October. Should be a lot of fun. Watch this space.

 

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Comments:

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Posted August 24, 2010 at 1:12 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26529/

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Greg Griffith

TEC Arrives at CAPA with Greetings, Bribes

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Sabune said he will bring "good news of great joy from the Episcopal Church that those in prison are being visited, the hungry are fed and the homeless have homes. Jesus is proclaimed as Lord and Savior in small rural churches and in large urban cathedrals. The Episcopal Church is low church evangelical and high church Anglo-catholic."

Episcopal Relief & Development is represented by six staff members, who are attending the gathering as observers and to connect with partners in Anglican dioceses and provinces throughout Africa. They include Rob Radtke, president; Malaika Kamunanwire, senior director of marketing and communications; Nagulan Nesiah and Danielle Tirello, program officers; and Shaun Walsh and Kellie McDaniel of the NetsforLife program, a partnership that has benefited 18 million people by implementing integrated malaria-prevention programs in 17 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

Trinity Church, Wall Street, which through its grants program supports projects throughout Africa, also will be represented at the gathering. Representatives also are expected from the Anglican Communion Office, Lambeth Palace, United Nations bodies and the African Union.

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Posted August 23, 2010 at 7:49 pm
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26527/

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Jackie

U. S. Court Rules Against Obama Stem Cell Policy

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A U.S. district court issued a preliminary injunction on Monday stopping federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research, in a slap to the Obama administration's new guidelines on the sensitive issue.

The court ruled in favor of a suit filed in June by researchers who said human embryonic stem cell research involved the destruction of human embryos.

Judge Royce Lamberth granted the injunction after finding the lawsuit would likely succeed because the guidelines violated law banning the use of federal funds to destroy human embryos.

"(Embryonic stem cell) research is clearly research in which an embryo is destroyed," Lamberth wrote in a 15-page ruling. The Obama administration could appeal his decision or try to rewrite the guidelines to comply with U.S. law.

The entire article is available here.

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Posted August 23, 2010 at 4:27 pm
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26526/

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Sarah

An Interesting Event Going On This Week: 2nd All Africa Bishops’ Conference

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Check it out.

And here is the conference schedule.

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Comments:

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Posted August 23, 2010 at 1:38 pm
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26525/

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Sarah

Robert Munday on Resurrection Sunday Dance, Budapest, Hungary

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Check out the entire post, from which the below is excerpted:

I have been concerned about the countries of Eastern Europe in the post-Soviet era, because many of them, having lived for a couple of generations under official atheism have now turned to secularism and materialism and are in as much of a social and spiritual predicament as they were under Communism. To put it another, less flattering way: if you are an Eastern European and the only model you have for what to do with your freedom is what you see in Western Europe and the so-called "culture" exported by American mass media, you are in real trouble.

Perhaps nowhere have the ill effects of trying to fill post-Soviet emptiness with Western materialism and decadence been more obvious than in the cities of Prague (Czech Republic) and Budapest (Hungary).

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Posted August 23, 2010 at 1:34 pm
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26510/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Sarah

ACI: Proposed Statement Of Clarification For Adoption Of The Covenant

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I really like this idea. What do y'all think? What are its strengths? What are its weaknesses?

Make sure you read the entire piece over at the ACI website:

Accordingly, it is necessary for covenanting churches to clarify what committee they intend to perform the functions specified in Section 4. Adopting the Covenant without such a clarification would suggest that the ACC standing committee is intended for this role when it is manifestly unsuited for the task. But it is not necessary to amend the Covenant text for this or broader purposes because the text does not explicitly identify the ACC committee as it is now constituted. Unnecessarily amending the Covenant would also run the very real risk of splitting the Communion into groups that had adopted different texts. The final text as proposed constitutes a common understanding of the Communion and its structures, widely held by the member churches, that should not be given up through unilateral amendment.

What is required, therefore, is not an amendment but a clarification to specify transitional procedures and to establish on a provisional basis a committee capable of performing the tasks defined in Section 4. Among other things, this provisional committee would arrange for a committee recognized by the covenanting churches to fulfill the Covenant duties on an ongoing basis.

Accordingly, we offer the following suggestion for a way forward in light of the confusion over the status of the ACC and the committee specified in Section 4. We propose that each church adopting the Covenant also adopt the following statement of clarification and attach it as an integral part of the adoption to the instrument by which they formally enter into the covenant . . .

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Posted August 23, 2010 at 10:14 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26517/

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Sarah

An Interesting Small Window Into the Diocese of Los Angeles

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[Hat tip: a ruffianish Episcopal layperson in the Diocese of Los Angeles -- you know who you are]

A few things spring to mind when I read this from our favorite non-truth-telling TEC bishop.

First, that's an awful lot of money for not a whole lot of eyeballs for The Episcopal News. The good bishop claims 70,000 members [it's actually 65,000 members according to their own stats page, but I'm sure that Bishop Bruno can't be bothered to attend to such trivial details as that], and 3000 whole people for their online readership.

Second, why are they having to target raising a measly $30,000 to "meet diocesan digital media operational expenses." I'd assume that line item could be found in The Sacred Budget.

Which brings me to Third . . . in checking out the Diocese of Los Angeles stats sheet we find that TEC's Most Inclusive Welcoming Diocese Ever is . . . down in membership, down in ASA, and flat-line in pledging, which as we all know in the days of soaring insurance and other costs, means that the Diocese is losing ground financially. In the past 10 years, the Diocese of Los Angeles has gone from a high of around 73,000 members in 1998 to approximately 65,000 in 2008. Its ASA has moved from around 23,000 to 20,000. And its pledging line took a huge hit in 2003, gasped and recovered a bit by 2006 and is now flatline to a slight decline.

From here:

(2.) The diocesan online community is partnering with The Episcopal News online to raise $30,000 this fall to meet diocesan digital media operational expenses. We need 2,000 of our sponsoring readers to contribute $15 each (or two shares at $30) before December 31. Please help, and click here to donate via PayPal (or send a check to The Episcopal News, P.O. Box 512164, Los Angeles, Calif. 90051. Thank you.

(3.) Did you know that online readership for The Episcopal News and its weekly Update is currently about 3,000?

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Posted August 23, 2010 at 8:19 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26514/

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Sarah

[Uganda] Anglican Church is broken, says Orombi

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So true -- we're the church of dysfunctional heretical corrupt loons -- Janet Trisk, Colin Coward, and Charles Bennison. The Trifecta of illness, so to speak, for a church.

From the Daily Monitor:

“What I can tell you is that the Anglican Church is very broken,” Bishop Orombi said.

“It (church) has been torn at its deepest level, and it is a very dysfunctional family of the provincial churches. It is very sad for me to see how far down the church has gone.”

Speaking at the opening of a three-day provincial Assembly in Mukono, the head of the Church of Uganda noted that the church has lost credibility.

He proposed that the Church of Uganda engages church structures at a very minimal level until godly faith and order have been restored. “I can assure you that we have tried as a church to participate in the processes, but they are dominated by western elites, whose main interest is advancing a vision of Anglicanism that we do not know or recognise. We are a voice crying in the wilderness,” he said at the Church’s top assembly that convenes every two years.

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Posted August 23, 2010 at 8:01 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26512/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Matt Kennedy

St. Raphael’s Episcopal Priest Moves on to Create New Church (Florida)

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From here

Last Sunday, Pastor Alice Marcrum, priest and vicar of St. Raphael's Episcopal Church, preached her last sermon at the historic structure. She is leaving to form a new church, the St. Raphael's By the Sea, an Anglican church next week. Most of the members of the congregation stood up and read letters of support for Pastor Alice, as she is known, declaring that they would make the change with her and leave St. Raphael's to form a new church. This Anglican church will meet, starting next Saturday at 5:00 p.m. at the Fellowship Hall of the Beach United Methodist Church. They will meet there until they find a suitable home for themselves.

Bob Bunting, the Junior Warden of St. Raphael's, said that Rev. Marcrum left without any warning and he had to call the bishop to get a priest to come and do the service for next Sunday. He said there was never any time that it was a possibility that St. Raphael's would close, and Rev. Marcrum agreed. She said she knew that St. Raphael's would be fine. That was just a rumor that was stifled immediately...more

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Posted August 23, 2010 at 8:26 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26509/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Matt Kennedy

R.C. Sproul & Stephen Meyer Discuss Intelligent Design

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From here

The idea that the universe was caused by chance is one of the most deeply ingrained and widespread theories in modern science. For the past several days on Renewing Your Mind, we’ve taken a close look at the relationship between science and the existence of God. In the six-part series Creation or Chaos, R.C. Sproul looked at the conflict between faith and science, the relationship between faith and reason, the uses of the word “chance,” the necessity of the existence of God, and the creation debate between atheism and theism.

Today on Renewing Your Mind is the conclusion of a two-part interview with R.C. Sproul and Dr. Stephen Meyer, director of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture (CSC) and a founder both of the intelligent design movement and of the CSC, intelligent design’s primary intellectual and scientific headquarters...more

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Comments:

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Posted August 23, 2010 at 7:54 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26508/

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Greg Griffith

Recommendation: the Daily Office Daily

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You may have noticed a new banner at the top of our pages. It's from the Rev. Mike Michie, the vicar of St Andrew's Episcopal Church in McKinney, Texas.

This is a free, orthodox, daily email that goes out to anyone who subscribes, and I strongly encourage everyone to subscribe. It's put together by Fr. Michie, who says "I’m doing this as my own contribution to our church in this hour - to get us back to the Word and to prayer."

It's free and all you have to do is click here to send Fr. Mike an email - we've even filled in the email subject for you! All you have to do is click the link and then send the email. Fr. Mike will take care of the rest.

It's a great way to support sponsors who buy advertising on Stand Firm, and, as Fr. Mike says, to get back to the Word and to prayer at this time of crisis in the church.

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Comments:

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Posted August 22, 2010 at 11:46 pm
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26507/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Greg Griffith

These Imbeciles Again

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A Church of England vicar has stunned his flock by revealing plans to marry a toy boy male model who is 40 years his junior.

Reverend Colin Coward, 65, intends to enter into a civil partnership with Nigerian boyfriend Bobby Egbele, 25.

The Church demands that ordained clergy who are gay must be celibate but the vicar has refused to confirm that he will comply with these rules.

Rev Coward said yesterday: “It’s a ridiculous situation and a real mess. But some bishops who know that a couple are in a civil partnership and are sharing the same bed will approve and will encourage them to do that.”

The pair have caused another stir because they intend to receive a “blessing” in church after tying the knot. But it will officially be a Eucharist because blessing gay couples is forbidden.

Rev Coward said: “Churches can bless almost anything else – animals, bombs, battleships and armies going to war. But gay couples? No.”

Well, the only way anyone can be "stunned" that Colin Coward is marrying a Nigerian "toy boy" 40 years his junior is if they don't know Colin Coward, so presumably no one in his flock is actually "stunned."

There's a photo of the happy couple at the link, if you care to have a gander.

Do note that the "toy boy" is not Davis Mac-Iyalla, but sheesh... The Rev. Coward sure has a type, doesn't he?

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Posted August 21, 2010 at 1:15 pm
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26506/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Matt Kennedy

St. Vincent’s (Ft. Worth) under fire for blocking gay activist couple’s attempt to undermine school

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The headline (below) distorts the issue significantly from the get-go. First, the child cannot be "of" two women. Secondly, by definition they cannot be "married" to each other although I am certain some court or church declared it to be so. So the headline already sets the tone for a prejudiced, not to mention, jaundiced view of the matter...

"Child of Married Lesbians Denied Enrollment into School (headline)

...They attended the school's parent night on Tuesday, and now, just a few days before school starts Monday, the school is denying their daughter Olivia enrollment into the school because her parents are lesbians, the women said.

I am horribly disappointed. In fact, we are in the 21st century and we are still dealing with this issue. We should just move on. Denying my daughter education based on who I end up sleeping with at the end of the day makes me furious," said Jill.

"It's hard to believe that a place that's supposed to take in and teach children about God and the basics of religion would actually discriminate against her because of who we are," said Tracy...more

Actually, it's not hard to believe at all since the lessons that the child would learn at the school about God would be directly denied and rejected by the words and deeds of her "parents".

One wonders what would lead two women who engage in sexual acts with one another while raising someone else's child in their home and leading the poor child to believe that such activity is normal and good would want to send their child to St. Vincent's?

I wonder if there might be more to this story...

Here is a more balanced article

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Comments:

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Posted August 21, 2010 at 6:43 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26505/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Jackie

Feds Embargo Pro-Abstinence Findings

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Remember the promise of transparency? Yeah, right. Just one more example of hype and cringe, I guess.

Makes one wonder if one of the massive bailouts made this department exempt from FOIA also. Come, November, Come.

The full results of a national study that favors abstinence education is being withheld from researchers and the public.

The taxpayer-supported survey from 2008 found that around 70 percent of parents and their teenagers believed that teens should wait until marriage to have sex. Despite release of the study's summary and its highlight at two major public health conferences last year, the Department of Health and Human Services is withholding the full results according to Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Abstinence Education Foundation.

"When a researcher [Dr. Lisa Rue] asked the HHS for the full results, she [was told it] is not public information and it has not been released to the public and so you don't have access to it," relates Huber. "[I find that] a little incredulous since it was shared publicly at two different venues."

Huber questions the motivation of the Obama administration, noting that "as of this past fiscal year, President Obama specifically put in his budget a desire to end all funding for abstinence education."

The entire article can be found here.

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Posted August 19, 2010 at 9:01 pm
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26504/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Sarah

Message for youth ministers during Birmingham conference: Less gimmick, more God

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[Hat tip: T19]

If I were going to pick two current-day Anglican theologians whose work is profoundly important, they would be Bishop Fitz Allison's and Dr. Ashley Null's. Further, the Cathedral Church of the Advent in Alabama is doing yeoman's work in a very challenging and poorly led diocese. Commendations all around on this event!

From the Birmingham News, where there is more:

"Entertainment for the sake of entertainment is missing the point," said Cameron Cole, director of youth ministries at Advent. "A lot of youth ministry focuses on entertainment and behavior modification, not on long-term spiritual formation. If there's no belief system that undergirds it, there's not much foundation on which to stand."

Anglican theologian Ashley Null, a chaplain for the U.S. Olympic team, led a discussion about pressures on youth ministers to entertain, draw numbers and "fix kids."

The push to perfection for both youth ministers and youth can be destructive, he said. "Are you pursuing perfection to your own harm?" he asked. He urged ministers to embrace God's grace and love of imperfection.

"Love does strange things to us," he said. "We gladly make changes out of love."

The Rev. Frank Limehouse, dean of the Advent Cathedral, said his staff saw an opportunity to help refocus youth ministry by inviting theologians to address the issue.

"It's a law-driven ministry, not a grace-driven ministry," Limehouse said. "We hope to change that."

If a youth event focuses on sexual abstinence or an anti-drug or anti-alcohol message, it needs theology supporting it, Cole said.

"We want to avoid giving kids a list of rules to follow, emotionally motivating them to follow the rules without any conception of who made the rules and how the one who made the rules feels about them," Cole said. "Cultivating a belief system based on the Bible takes a long time."

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Posted August 19, 2010 at 9:17 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26489/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Matt Kennedy

The ever-Shrinking Brian Mclaren…errors for our time

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Arrogance masquerading as humility, lies garnished with truth, historical myth making, biblical distortion, a friendly face, a furrowed brow, an "earnest" desire to "free the gospel" from the "old narrative"...here's Brian Mclaren's culturally seductive slew of error



Therefore God sends them a powerful delusion that they may believe what is false...(2 Thessalonians 2:11)

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Posted August 19, 2010 at 6:52 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26503/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Jackie

How Well Do You Know The Real Peter Tatchell?

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As a reminder, Mr. Tatchell is considered as one of the foremost UK gay activists.

By Dr. Lisa Nolland

Though I hugely appreciate Peter Tatchell’s (PT) defence of human rights and religious liberty, I am appalled by some of his views because I believe they are toxic to human well-being. In the past he contributed to a paedophile-advocacy volume. At present on his site,he asserts that ‘all sexualities are valid’. PT also insists ‘porn can be good for you’ which I consider in the same vein as saying that nuclear waste can be good for you. Moreover, PT affirms that ‘equality is not enough’ and that ‘the lofty ideals of queer liberation and sexual freedom’ need to be recovered by gays in order to be able to liberate the rest of us from ‘the more general erotophobic and sex-negative nature of contemporary culture, which also harms heterosexuals'. As well as being vividly pornographic—erect penises all over the place— PT's book, Safer Sexy: The Guide to Gay Sex Safely (1994), provides eloquent testimony to his libertarian sexual views. I cannot do a visual ‘Show and Tell’ of it in this document (see below) but will use words to describe some of the graphic content.

Like most of us, I imagine, PT is a mixed bag. Of his commitment to his principles and willingness to sacrifice himself for them over the decades, there is no doubt! There is also no doubt that Peter and I share certain values, like the importance of free speech, human rights and social justice. I deeply admire his courage and readiness to aid Christians like Dale McAlpine and many other oppressed folk around the globe.

However, Greenbelt [GB], ‘the UK’s largest Christian festival’, is sending out a sub-text that is totally at odds with a Christian understanding of sexuality by including PT on its programme, and I ask it to reconsider.

Contrary to wanting Peter ‘censored and banned’ (a claim he made earlier in response to my concerns), I would like to see his views much better known, so that they can be debated and responded to. But a public platform at GB is not the place for him to set out these views. Though GB bills him as, among other things, a gay and lesbian ‘equality’ campaigner, what I see as a fuller range of PT’s views remains largely unknown and is certainly not present in GB’s line-up information. If Peter’s views were better known, people might be more aware of the deleterious impact of such views on society, so it is lack of knowledge that concerns me.

PT appears to believe he has every right to attack the Pope for espousing beliefs he considers to be false or malignant, and thus detrimental to society. I feel those who attend GB have the right to be made aware of aspects of the lesser-known Peter which I consider malignant. ‘This’ Peter is the one their kids may come across the following week when, after being taken with him at GB, they head onto his site — http://www.petertatchell.net/ — or track down his work on Amazon or in the library.

The material point here is that young people who attend GB and hear Peter are given false assurance that PT is the sort of person they should be listening to. GB has enough respect for PT as a public figure to place him on the platform; he is good and ‘safe’ enough for trendy, successful, ‘Christian’ GB. Thus, there is a de facto legitimisation of the plausibility of his views across the board. And even though these subjects are not the subject to hand — as Peter keeps insisting — the views he holds on them still matter because they are in the public domain.

Given these concerns, I ask GB to reconsider their inclusion of PT on their platform line-up.

The material below documents some of the key features of PT's views on sexuality, puts them into a larger setting and provides an evaluation and response.

a. The Age of Consent and Paedophilia

I have spent a great deal of time reading PT’s writing in hard copy and on his site. I begin with his views on the age of consent and paedophilic sexuality. On the site, he argues for the age of consent to be lowered to 14 for both gay and straight youngsters; elsewhere also on his site, he considers that if kids under 14 have consentual sex, and if there is no greater than a three year age differential, there should not be a prosecution.

In relation to the now famous/infamous ‘Lee’ (a 14 year who began having sex with lads at the age of 8 and with adult males at the age of 12), Peter states, ‘It is not an advocacy or approval of his sexual relationships with older men, but merely a reportage of Lee’s perspective.’ Fair enough (I will not even begin to describe the physiological. psychological and developmental reasons for delaying sexual initiation for children and young people). Back to Peter, though, I believe we have not been given the whole story.

I would like to know what happened to PT’s earlier, far more radical views. They were published in The Betrayal of Youth: Radical Perspectives on Childhood Sexuality, Intergenerational Sex, and the Social Oppression of Children and Young People, ed. Warren Middleton (London: CL Publications, 1986). Middleton’s pedophile credentials are impeccable. On p. 258, we learn that he ‘has been called “one of the founding fathers of the pedophile movement in Britain”’ no doubt due to, among other factors, his leadership of PIE (Paedophile Information Exchange) and the journal, Understanding Pedophilia.

The North American Man/Boy Love Association, NAMBLA, cited Middleton’s volume along with others titles such as Paedophilia: The Radical Case; Sexual Experience Between Men and Boys and The Age Taboo.[ii]

In Middleton’s volume, Peter contributed the chapter, ‘Questioning Ages of Majority and Ages of Consent’, in which he encourages his readers to re-examine fundamental assumptions and concepts about acceptable sexual behaviour for the young:

Shouldn’t we be preparing and educating children for greater rights and responsibilities at an earlier age; perhaps critically re-examining our concept of childhood and viewing children more as young citizens? Certainly, in the realm of sexual ages of consent, we need to ask whether the law has any legitimate role to play in criminalising consenting, victimless sexual activity. [p. 118]

Peter also argues the primary protection the young require (as do their elders) is against coercion and rape, a situation which is already dealt with legally. Moreover, he asserts that young people are ‘usually’ damaged more by the social opprobrium attached to consenting under-age sex than they are by the sex itself.

It gets worse. On page 157, Middleton declares that

True liberation is contingent upon the right to say no to sex as well as yes. In this context the authors of this book firmly believe that when the time comes for the ages of consent to be abolished, the potential for exploitation – itself an overworked term – would be drastically reduced, since with greater freedom there would be less need for subterfuge.

Moreover, on page 179 Middleton assures us that

All the contributors to this study agree that we should be working towards the day when children’s sexual and social rights are both recognised and accepted.

Read the entire article at Anglican Mainstream.

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Posted August 18, 2010 at 9:49 pm
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26502/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Jackie

Another Christian In Hollywood, Thank The Lord

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Watch to the end of the video.

Hat tip: Veritas2007

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Posted August 17, 2010 at 1:05 pm
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26501/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Sarah

The ACC Articles of Association: Questions Remain

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The seven issues raised by the ACI on the new Constitution of the ACC are devastating in their implications. The new Constitution will now have to be either significantly revised, or utterly separated from any connection to the actual Anglican Communion. Otherwise, the Anglican Communion fractures even further and more significantly as provinces will rush to distance themselves from that ill-conceived Constitution.

Yesterday the Anglican Communion News Service published an interview with Canon John Rees, legal advisor to the Anglican Consultative Council, that responded in part to questions we previously raised in our paper, “Contrasting Futures for the Anglican Communion: A Transformed ACC and the Anglican Covenant.” We are grateful to the Anglican Communion Office, Canon Rees and the ACNS for responding directly on this matter of wide interest and for their renewed commitment to transparency in the process of structural reform now underway in the Communion. We continue to believe that these changes raise significant questions, that many of these questions remain unanswered, and that these questions should be considered throughout the Anglican Communion. We emphasize that the questions we raise below are not posed to Canon Rees alone, but are addressed more broadly to all those interested in the future of the Communion.

1. Canon Rees begins by providing helpful background to the constitutional changes recently implemented at the ACC. He notes that one of the objectives of the new Articles was to eliminate personal liability to which the trustees responsible for managing the Communion’s charitable assets might be exposed. As we emphasized in our original paper, this is an objective we fully share. But reiterating this objective does not address the concern we raised, which was instead whether “this legal entity should be one of the Communion Instruments itself and [whether] the fiduciaries charged with overseeing these charitable activities should be the same as those comprising one of the bodies responsible for faith and order in the Communion.”

Surely no one wants the trustees exposed to personal liability. But are we equally certain we want those who share responsibility for faith and order in the Communion to be those same charitable trustees having fiduciary duties under the charity law and legal duties imposed by the Companies Acts? In our paper, we emphasized in particular the role of the Communion’s Primates, who bear special responsibility for “doctrinal, moral and pastoral matters that have Communion-wide implications.” These are not duties recognized by English company law or even by the new ACC Articles.

We noted in our paper that the ACC as originally conceived did not contemplate that it would itself become an English company or even an English charity. At its second meeting in 1973, the ACC authorized the formation of an English charitable trust for the purpose of owning “on behalf of the Council” all “property and funds situated in the United Kingdom.” We have now come to the point that the ACC, at its creation an international unincorporated association not necessarily tied to UK law, has itself become completely identified legally with that charitable property-holding entity, now an English company governed by UK and EU law like any other English company. Has there been informed debate in the Communion on this transformation? Even if this is the appropriate legal vehicle for an affiliate that owns UK property, is this the best structure for a Communion Instrument having responsibilities relating to faith and order?

2. One of our concerns with the new Articles is that they reverse the traditional relationship between the full ACC council and its standing committee, giving the standing committee primary management authority and the full council a lesser and secondary role. Canon Rees responded to this concern by saying:

That’s very wide of the mark. The drafting committee took care to ensure that the plenary meeting of the Council would continue to have the same democratic rights to appoint the Standing Committee that it always had in its unincorporated state. The wider membership attending the plenary meetings of the ACC every two or three years remains the body which appoints its members of the Standing Committee and entrusts the Committee with the Council’s work in between its meetings.

But this response only highlights that the full council, formerly the consultative body itself that functioned as one of the four Instruments, is now a body whose primary legal responsibility is to appoint the standing committee. Canon Rees also notes that the standing committee members are now not only the trustees for charity law purposes but also the company directors for company law purposes. He does not acknowledge, however, what was a primary concern expressed in our paper: only the standing committee members are now the members of the new company that constitutes the ACC and only they are responsible under the law for company governance. Other UK church-related charities converting to limited company status have done so without demoting former members to remove their status as legal members, including some with membership that far exceeds that of the ACC.

In fact, taken together Canon Rees’ response raises more questions than it answers. Why were only the standing committee members made the legal members of the new company? What legal function does the full council have other than electing the standing committee? Does UK company law impose additional governance restrictions on the ACC not specified in the Articles, such as a 75% vote by the standing committee to approve changes to the Articles? Does this voting requirement supersede the provisions in the Articles or are the different provisions cumulative? If the opportunity was taken to re-define the ACC’s objects, why were those of the full council made narrower than those of the standing committee? And most importantly, is this relationship between the ACC and its standing committee, a committee that was briefly identified as the “Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion,” one that the Communion finds appropriate for the role of one of its four Instruments? Given the lack of transparency during much of this process, it is doubtful that informed consideration was given to these often technical issues by the member churches.

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Posted August 17, 2010 at 9:39 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26491/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Jackie

All Saints Anglican, Baton Rouge Has A Home

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From the rector, Fr. Mark Turner: “I am so excited about what God is doing with All Saints. Each week is a new adventure as we seek to be faithful to Gospel. The Lord has added to our numbers in the past year and we look forward to His adding more new faces in the year ahead. Anyone interested in helping to shape the direction of a new Anglican church like All Saints are most welcome to come and be a part of our work for the sake of the unchanging Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Red Stick Rant has the entire story here.

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Posted August 17, 2010 at 9:56 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26500/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Greg Griffith

Vaughn Walker on Prop 8 Evidence: Not Disputing It, Just Ignoring It

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The other day I had remarked on http://www.standfirminfaith.com/?/sf/page/26481" title="the bizarre nature">the bizarre nature of Judge Vaughn Walker's pronouncement that the plaintiffs in the Prop 8 case had no standing for appeal. Among other questions it raised was: If the plaintiffs have no standing for appeal, then what standing did they have to bring the case to court in the first place?

Maggie Gallagher posts a short piece at National Review Online along the same lines:

The Ninth Circuit’s stay overruling Judge Walker’s decision to allow gay marriage is the third time Judge Walker has been slapped down by appellate courts: once by the Supreme Court over the issue of televising the trial; once by the Ninth Circuit over the issue of forced disclosure of private e-mails by campaign leaders; and now by the Ninth Circuit again.

When you read the brief that Charles Cooper filed, it’s not hard to see why. It is a total smack-down of Walker’s decision to ignore the immense amount of evidence brought to him — not to dispute it, but simply to ignore it.

Her post links to a brief by the National Organization for Marriage's Chuck Cooper, who points out that:

Walker is trying to insulate his opinion from judicial review by claiming Prop 8 proponents lack standing. No wonder. He knows this opinion is a stack of cards that will not stand up to serious scrutiny by higher courts.

Here's at least 8 ways – taken from the emergency motion filed by the Prop 8 lawyers today – Walker's opinion ignored facts that did not fit his thesis, acting more like an activist than a neutral referee...

Head over there and see what you think.

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Posted August 17, 2010 at 8:50 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26499/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Matt Kennedy

Sermon: Does God have time for our Prayers? (What kind of Father is he?—prayer part 3)

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read the text here:

No one but a priest could enter into the holy place where God’s Spirit dwelt and only after sacrifices had been made to atone for his sin. And no one but the high priest and only once a year could enter the Holy of Holies the inner sanctum where the Ark of the covenant was set and, again, only after the required sacrifices. When Nadab and Abihu, the two sons of Aaron, priests, get it into their heads to approach God in a new way, ignoring the rites revealed by God in the law, what happens? God destroys them (Leviticus 10:1-4). Why? Moses tells their grieving father, “[3] ‘Among those who are near me I will be sanctified, and before all the people I will be glorified.’” And Aaron held his peace.”

Sometimes Christians read the OT and think “wow God sure was scary back then. Thank goodness he’s grown since then.” I mean he doesn’t live in a temple made of stone anymore, the Holy Spirit lives in our hearts and in he’s indwelt the church and it’s just a lot safer to be around him now. Be careful. Acts 5:1-5. Annanias and Saphira sell some property and voluntarily commit to give all the proceeds to the church, but they lie to the disciples about how much they made and keep some back. In their minds they might have been thinking “Hey, its just the church…it’s not like we’re lying to God or anything. just to the church.” God strikes them both dead. Why? Peter says, “You have not lied to men but to God.” (4) The Spirit of God indwells hearts of believers and the church, true, but that doesn’t mean he’s safe. “‘Among those who are near me I will be sanctified, and before all the people I will be glorified.’ and so prayer isn’t a lighthearted thing. We approach the living, holy and almighty God.

And yet, Jesus gives his followers a prayer to pray regularly, repeatedly, as a normal part of our lives, that addresses the thrice holy God, the God before whom none can stand and whom none can see, as Father...The question on the minds of his disciples must have been, “How can we?”...more

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Posted August 17, 2010 at 7:39 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26498/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

David Ould

Wittenburg’s Luther Statue Temporarily Replaced with Gnomes

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worth posting this up, if only for the title.

See what you think... (nb there's a short ad before the main video)

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Posted August 16, 2010 at 11:01 pm
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26497/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Greg Griffith

9th Circus Halts Gay Marriages in CA Until Appeal is Heard

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On-again, off-again:

SAN FRANCISCO – A federal appeals court put same-sex weddings in California on hold indefinitely Monday while it considers the constitutionality of the state's gay marriage ban.

The decision, issued by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, trumps a lower court judge's order that would have allowed county clerks to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples on Wednesday.

Chief U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker decided last week to allow gay marriages to go forward after ruling that the ban, known as Proposition 8, violated equal protection and due process rights of gays and lesbians guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution.

The Proposition 8 legal team quickly appealed Walker's ruling in a case that many believe will end up before the Supreme Court.

Lawyers for two same-sex couples had joined with California Attorney General Jerry Brown in urging the appeals court to allow the weddings, arguing that keeping the ban in place any longer would harm the civil rights of gays and lesbians.

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Posted August 16, 2010 at 6:47 pm
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26496/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Greg Griffith

Where is Lesbian Bishop Mary Glasspool Today?

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Well, according to Susan Russell, she's at the Orange County Pride Festival.

Now I'm warning you - at that link are plenty of photos depicting lifelong monogamous commitment, and a whole lot of dignity worth respecting.

Such as performances by a drag queen in a nun's habit named Sister Shelby Hellbound.

And another drag queen what goes by the name "Lady Vajayjay."

And of course another drag queen who calls itself "Jizzona Straynger."

On the right sidebar you'll see one of the sponsors is St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Tustin, CA, which bills itself as "a welcoming and inclusive community," which I can only assume means they welcome sodomite cross-dressers in nuns' habits.

Dignity. Respect it.

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Posted August 16, 2010 at 2:48 pm
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26495/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Matt Kennedy

Al Mohler: The Inerrancy of Scripture: The Fifty Years’ War . . . and Counting

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from here

...Back in 1990, theologian J. I. Packer recounted what he called a “Thirty Years’ War” over the inerrancy of the Bible. He traced his involvement in this war in its American context back to a conference held in Wenham, Massachusetts in 1966, when he confronted some professors from evangelical institutions who “now declined to affirm the full truth of Scripture.” That was nearly fifty years ago, and the war over the truthfulness of the Bible is still not over — not by a long shot.

From time to time, the dust has settled in one arena, only for the battle to erupt in another. In the 1970s, the most visible battles were fought over Fuller Theological Seminary and within the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod...more

Inerrancy is such an important doctrine. I make sure that any seminary candidate we send forward upholds Inerrancy and I do my best to place them in Anglican schools and/or programs that uphold the same.

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Posted August 16, 2010 at 12:23 pm
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26494/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Sarah

The Anglican Consultative Council’s Standing Committee: Who Is Janet Trisk?

While it's clear that she is a progressive/revisionist activist of the most extreme, the Sea of Faith Network is certainly a few steps beyond revisionist Anglican activism -- beyond support for non-celibate gay relationships and their affirmation, beyond feminist Marxist liberation theology, beyond manipulation of political processes at ACC meetings, beyond heretical Christology. Other than the Sea of Faith's interest in the use of religion, it would be hard to find a more antithetically religious organization than one that denies the objective existence of God. And just because Janet Trisk has had some book reviews posted on the Sea of Faith Network doesn't mean she's a member of such an interesting, albeit godless, organization. But the shocking fact is that Janet Trisk is a member of the Sea of Faith Network.

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As most know, Janet Trisk -- a Caucasian lawyer turned Anglican priest from South Africa -- was recently appointed to the Standing Committee of the Anglican Consultative Council, one of the four Instruments of Communion.

Already well known as a TEC-gospel-supporting activist, who proposed the amendment to remove Section Four at the Jamaica meeting of the Standing Committee and engaged in the political activism all of us are familiar with in order to attempt to strip the Covenant of enforcement ability, the curious might wonder if there is more to learn about Trisk. And there is.

First, here are the basics of her bio, as found over on the Anglican Communion website:

Janet is a South African and a lecturer in Systematic Theology and Spirituality at the College of the Transfiguration, Grahamstown, South Africa. She is ordained and served for five years in parish ministry. She represented the ACSA at the ACC meeting in 2005. Before training for the ministry, Janet was a lawyer. Her academic interests include women’s theologies, the construction of identity and Christian anthropology. She holds a Masters degree from the University of Cape Town. Her doctoral studies keep getting postponed by activities such as this study process!

Since this bio was written, Trisk has left the College of the Transfiguration as lecturer. It now appears that she is the "Rector of the Parish of St David, Prestbury in Pietermaritzburg, in the Diocese of Natal."

One can note in her bio and other writings the usual liberal interests -- "women's theologies" [as opposed to truthful theologies, I suppose, and with the typical implication that the theologies found in Holy Scripture are by nature "men's" theologies] -- as well as her need to mention that, though she does not yet have a doctorate, she certainly will acquire one soon if she can be left alone long enough to pursue it. It's always interesting to view what someone wants put into their biography -- and the fact that she is engaged in "doctoral studies" was obviously important to Trisk to communicate.

Trisk is the author or co-author of a number of revisionist statements, journal articles, and reviews of various books, much of those surrounding the issue of homosexuality, and others surrounding the topic of... well, I'll get to that in a moment.

For starters, she helped create and promote this statement for South African Anglicans that asserted in part: "the time has come to give space for such diversity [of conviction regarding the blessing of same sex unions]" and

"There are members within our church who believe in good faith and conscience that God accepts them as gay, and further that God blesses their commitment to faithful relationship. We believe that our church should be open to such convictions... "

.
She engaged in interviewing various Anglican gays and documenting those interviews with a purpose of countering the St. Andrew's Day Statement, in particular countering this paragraph in the St. Andrew's Day Statement:

There can be no description of human reality, in general or in particular, outside the reality in Christ. We must be on guard, therefore, against constructing any other ground for our identities than the redeemed humanity given us in him. Those who understand themselves as homosexuals, no more and no less than those who do not, are liable to false understandings based on personal or family histories, emotional dispositions, social settings, and solidarities formed by common experiences or ambitions. Our sexual affections can no more define who we are than can our class, race or nationality. At the deepest ontological level, therefore, there is no such thing as ‘a’ homosexual or ‘a’ heterosexual; there are human beings, male and female, called to redeemed humanity in Christ, endowed with a complex variety of emotional potentialities and threatened by a complex variety of forms of alienation.

She chaired a discussion on Spirituality and Sexuality at a South African festival at which she commented:

“It is too simplistic to say African culture doesn’t accept homosexuality.

It cannot be denied that for some younger black people, it is becoming easier to come out”. But, aside from some black communities seeing it as taboo, Trisk says that the Church, through a “denial of the body, and denial of sexuality” has been reluctant to come to terms with gayness.

“Ultimately we are a long way from where our Constitution would like us to be,” says Trisk.

Of course, she's hard at work on the now-discredited, thoroughly propagandistic, and corrupt Continuing Indaba movement:

The group of women and men was able to reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of Indaba in South African political life. The women in particular reflected upon the frequent experience of being ignored in a process that was intended to be inclusive. The group identified particular areas on which they would work to guide Continuing Indaba in the Communion. Janet Trisk, the group convenor, will develop a paper on power, while and Kevin David, Youth Co-Ordinator of the Diocese of Mauritius in the Provice of the Indian Ocean, is to write on the significance of Continuing Indaba for young people.

She co-authored an article for the Journal of Anglican Studies titled "Theological Education and Anglican Identity in South Africa" -- here is the abstract for that article:

Theological education should take full account of the context in which it operates and authors share a commitment to a broadly defined liberation theology which takes the experience of the poor as its starting point. Focus is on the College of the Transfiguration in Grahamstown, a city with an unemployment rate of over 50 percent. The College supports not only theological education but also integrates ministerial and spiritual formation. The political context of South Africa has influenced the shape of theology even though students come from many other places. The contextualization thrust of the theology is shaped by a commitment to Outcomes Based Education. Anglican studies curriculum is shaped by this method and aims for a capacity to describe such things as Anglican identity, polity and beliefs. This is carried out in the absence of any sustained robust discourse on Anglican identity in the Anglican Communion.

Here's another article she authored for yet another journal:

"One of the key foci in the work of Grace Jantzen is an investigation of how we speak about God and who does the speaking. In this article I describe two ideas she investigates, namely God as embodied and God as the divine horizon. A sub-theme is Jantzen's critique of the Western preoccupation with mortality, death and violence and her suggestion that we instead look for signs and metaphors of flourishing, 'springs of newness and beauty'."

There is the usual and ubiquitous paean to feminist theology:

“This is a much-needed introduction to feminist theology through the writings, primarily, of women in Africa as well as the rest of the two-thirds world. Susan Rakoczy writes out of a profoundly scholarly position, but in language that is accessible to those who have not had the benefit of the same background. Her own deep spirituality permeates the work, lending it an engagingly personal dimension.”

And then there is her interesting Eucharistic and Christological "theology" -- found in her very own Eucharistic Prayer, in which she asserts that we find God in ourselves, and that Jesus was important because...: "We praise you that in Jesus Christ you make known to us the wonder and richness of our humanity."

Finally... there are several book reviews by Trisk on the website for the "Sea of Faith Network".

Here is one review on The Greening of Christianity. Note carefully this little paragraph in her book review which gives us a hint of a far more interesting aspect of Trisk than simply her garden-variety revisionist activism:

The first chapter deals with the frightening ecological crisis which faces us. The second traces the links between monotheism and the crisis. The third chapter outlines some ethical responses open to Christians. The fourth chapter is a creative re-imagining of Christian festivals in such a way that they may offer a liturgical basis for an ecological Christian practice.

Here is her review of Paradise on Earth, which includes enthusiastic praise, some typically shallow effusions about collectivism and liberation theology, and some fancies about utopia on earth:

I want so much to believe in Paradise on earth. I also wonder to what extent it is as remote as any other Paradise for which humanity has searched? This should not prevent us from the quest though. Perhaps we will even discover that the quest itself is Paradise.

Here is her rather breathless review of the book Christianity Without God, from which review I have excerpted these comments:

Christianity Without God examines whether it is possible to conceive of Christianity without the traditional theistic belief in God. Geering contends that this is not only possible but that Christianity, since its very origins, was moving towards the rejection of theism, and that in our time not only it is possible to conceive of non-theistic Christianity, but that Christianity should become so. If debates in the SOF Network are anything to go by, this question will be keenly followed by a number of Seafarers.

Geering argues that the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation form the basis for the Christian departure from theism. These inter-related doctrines contradict traditional Jewish monotheism, which sets God against humanity. Geering's argument of how the doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity spelled the beginning of the end of theism is systematic, scholarly and extremely wide-ranging...

Such a reading of Jesus, of course, has profound implications for the church which has modelled itself on imperial hierarchies, claiming the Lord Jesus and his Father God as the source of power and authority for Christian leaders. Geering notes that for "Christianity without God" there is no place for the traditional institutional church, which owes more to the Roman Empire than to Jesus. What does still have a place, he suggests, is the simple gathering of people for a meal, sharing of stories and support, and ritual and festivals celebrating all we have come to value in human existence.

But just what is this "Sea of Faith Network" for whose website Janet Trisk writes book reviews?

It's an interesting organization founded in the 1980s in the UK based on the writings of Don Cupitt, and with networks in other countries, including New Zealand and Australia. What does the Sea of Faith Network believe? Let's hear it straight from the website of the Sea of Faith Network:

Its stated aim is to ‘explore and promote religious faith as a human creation’...

SoF is most closely associated with the non-realist approach to religion. This refers to the belief that God has no ‘real’, objective or empirical existence, independent of human language and culture; God is ‘real’ in the sense that he is a potent symbol, metaphor or projection, but He has no objective existence outside and beyond the practice of religion. Non-realism therefore entails a rejection of all supernaturalism - miracles, afterlife and the agency of spirits.

‘God is the sum of our values, representing to us their ideal unity, their claims upon us and their creative power’. (Taking Leave of God, Don Cupitt, SCM, 1980)

Cupitt calls this 'a voluntarist interpretation of faith': 'a fully demythologized version of Christianity'. It entails the claim that even after we have given up the idea that religious beliefs can be grounded in anything beyond the human realm, religion can still be believed and practiced in new ways.

Obviously, the idea that God is nothing more than a human construct, that "He" is nothing more than a potent symbol, and that "He" has no real objective existence is an interesting one, albeit one held by quite a number of atheists and agnostics. Probably the place where Sea of Faith gains in significance is in its interest in and engagement with religion and religious faith, despite its assertions that God is merely a human construct.

The Sea of Faith Network has various local/regional groups in the UK, a quarterly magazine titled Sofia, and an annual conference -- at the 2010 conference a part of the agenda was an outdoors "pagan ritual."

The Sea of Faith Network has spread. From the New Zealand website we learn:

"While there is no formal affiliation between the SOF Networks in New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa and the United States, these country networks make up an informal worldwide "network of networks" regularly exchanging newsletter material and, on occasions, guest speakers. In addition, members of an internet discussion group of up to about 100 Sea of Faith members from many countries exchange points of view."

And from the UK website we learn that as of 2004 there are some 2000 members of the SoF Network.

A BBC article from 1999 also takes note of the Sea of Faith network, pointing out that some clergy are members of the Sea of Faith Network while maintaining leadership also in Christian churches, such as the Church of England. The BBC appears to recognize just how unsustainable and lacking in integrity those dual memberships and belief systems must be:

It is some years since David Jenkins, then Bishop of Durham, hit the headlines for saying he did not believe in the physical resurrection of Christ, or the virgin birth.

But the bishop was not alone in thinking things which Church authorities find unpalatable.

There is in particular one group, called Sea of Faith, which has attracted names such as "Godless vicars" and "atheist priests". It claims it has up to 50 vicars and some Roman Catholic priests in its membership, as well as rank and file church members.

It is easy to see why the organisation has been controversial. Although it has about 700 members in the UK, it draws on several denominations and also other religions. But what binds the members together is that they share the view that religion is a "human creation".

Some of its members go further and believe that God is also a human creation - a metaphor for human values such as love and forgiveness.

In other words, some of them believe there is no such thing as God in the traditional sense of an independent being.

The group is all the more controversial because some of its members decide to stay within the Church, even as vicars, and to continue to call themselves Christians.

A wikipedia article on the Sea of Faith Network notes "scattered membership in the USA, Northern Ireland, South Africa, France and The Netherlands."

But what has this to do with Janet Trisk, recently appointed member of the Anglican Consultative Council's Steering Committee? While it's clear that she is a progressive/revisionist activist of the most extreme, the Sea of Faith Network is certainly a few steps beyond revisionist Anglican activism -- beyond support for non-celibate gay relationships and their affirmation, beyond feminist Marxist liberation theology, beyond manipulation of political processes at ACC meetings, beyond heretical Christology. Other than the Sea of Faith's interest in the use of religion, it would be hard to find a more antithetically religious organization than one that denies the objective existence of God.

And just because Janet Trisk has had some book reviews posted on the Sea of Faith Network doesn't mean she's a member of such an interesting, albeit godless, organization.

But the shocking fact is that Janet Trisk is a member of the Sea of Faith Network. In her review -- yet another book review -- posted on the Sea of Faith Network site of New Zealand, she is clearly named as a member of the Sea of Faith Network in South Africa.

And in her Amazon review of a book about Don Cupitt, around whose ideas the Sea of Faith Network was founded, Trisk even addresses the idea of church membership and maintaining Cupitt's positions of "anti-realism," which recall "refers to the belief that God has no ‘real’, objective or empirical existence, independent of human language and culture":

"Having outlined the five phases of Cupitt's ethical journey (in part 1) the author goes on in part 2 to discuss the implications of Cupitt's ethical positions, especially insofar as they may or may not be compatible with church membership...

In a time when we are faced with religious fundamentalism and nihilism as the two sides of a global coin, Cupitt's `solar' ethics offers a lively and life-affirming alternative. For those who don't have the time to read Cupitt's prolific writing, "Surfing" is an excellent introduction to one of the most innovative religious thinkers of our time. However, "Surfing" is not just a book about Cupitt. It also stands as an insistent plea for anyone interested in exploring the ethical and ecclesial possibilities of being both anti-realist and a member of the church to investigate the questions for oneself and not to accept the empty rhetoric or of fundamentalism and nihilism.

So this is where we are with the latest member of the Standing Committee of the Anglican Consultative Council.

Janet Trisk is a member of the Sea of Faith Network, which is an organization of people who, despite their varied church memberships, believes that God has no real objective existence. He is merely a human construct and a potent symbol.

Janet Trisk is an appointed member of one of the most powerful bodies in the Anglican Communion. To quote the Sea of Faith Network's own website, her beliefs entail "the claim that even after we have given up the idea that religious beliefs can be grounded in anything beyond the human realm, religion can still be believed and practiced in new ways."

It appears that Ms. Trisk is determined to show us all the "new ways" that "religion can still be believed and practiced" within the Anglican Communion.

I have often said over the years that the current leaders of The Episcopal Church can no longer surprise me.

It seems that I will have to acquire that attitude about the Anglican Communion as well.

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Posted August 16, 2010 at 7:00 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26492/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Sarah

Closing Out A Sunday Evening With Evensong From Gloucester Cathedral

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Here is the original BBC link from which the below is taken:

From Gloucester Cathedral during the Three Choirs Festival.
Introit: I sing of a maiden (Graham Ross)
Responses: Joubert
Psalms: 59, 60, 61 (Clarke, Howells, Sumsion, Elgar)
First Lesson: Wisdom of Solomon 7 vv7-10, 15-16
Canticles: Collegium Magdalenae Oxoniense (Leighton)
Second Lesson: John 16 vv5-15
Anthem: The Twelve (Walton)
Hymn: Firmly I believe and truly (Drakes Broughton)
Organ Voluntary: Prelude and Fugue in B (Dupre)
Director of Music: Adrian Partington
Deputy Director of Music: Ashley Grote.

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Posted August 15, 2010 at 7:35 pm
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26493/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Sarah

[Off Topic] Hundreds Attend Fayette County K9 Funeral

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This is from CBS Atlanta, where there is more -- make sure you check out the clips from the funeral:

More than 100 area officers and community members showed up to pay their respects to an animal who was considered a integral part of the sheriff's mission.

The burial will follow the services at the Fayette County Sheriff’s Office Law Enforcement Canine Cemetery at 155 Johnson Avenue, Fayetteville.

Fayette County Sheriff’s Deputy Cody Benslay had a special bond with his partner, Arros.

“He was definitely like a family member to me. We did almost everything together, from sun up to sun down,” said Benslay.

The dog died from heat exhaustion after chasing four burglary suspects in a wooded area deputies said.

“We got the first two and there were two more, and we just kept going. Arros went until he couldn’t go anymore,” Benslay said.

Arros was airlifted to an animal hospital, but he died on the way. Deputies said every K-9 vehicle has an emergency kit in the back for use in an emergency.

What a magnificent animal. Beyond the terrible loss for the people who loved him and worked with him, there is also the loss of thousands of dollars of training for such a working dog.

I can't help but launch into a small essay on this.

This dog was healthy, fit and not overweight, and in the prime of his life. I've taken a dog wilderness emergency care course and dogs are truly amazing physical creatures. They can survive blood loss and shock so much better than we can -- puncture wounds, internal organ damage galore, and more. But two things will kill dogs with astounding speed -- heat and bloat. They simply do not have the internal air conditioning systems that we have, and if a human being is overheated, the dog with the human being may well be dangerously close to tipping over that temperature edge from which there is little chance of return. Even with iv's directly into the vein and the best medical technology, dogs will often die once they have reached a certain internal temperature. Think of them as creatures with no radiator to cool the engine, as human beings have. Furthermore, as this dog's death demonstrates, they will go until they fall over. And once they fall over it is often too late.

A dog that is running in hot Southern summer temperatures can do it and do it well -- but a different kind of care must be taken for them to stay alive and cool enough beyond that of what a human does for oneself. As an example, I do an 8-miler through the woods as one of my weekly runs. When I go with Brand -- a well-conditioned, acclimated, fit, young dog, I do not worry about my time. We stop every mile to mile and a half for him to lie in a cold stream and drink -- that course is one that has mountain brooks running through it periodically. I let him lie there for as long as he likes and when he gets up we move on. Even then, I watch him closely and have appropriate concern throughout the run. Once he reaches middle age to older, he won't be able to go on those sorts of runs with me on a summer afternoon -- not because he can't run, but because of the heat and the work that it takes to keep him cool.

Dogs are amazing creatures, and in some cases very fragile. Obviously any good owner knows that a dog needs water outside even if he is just lying about. But if you have a dog who is *working* during heat, he needs more than an occasional drink. In the case of a working Shepherd many will rest their dog after just half an hour of *work* during a summer Southern afternoon. That's how finely tuned and delicate these dogs are in the heat. If a dog is undergoing the stress and adrenaline and intense labor of sprinting after criminals, launching himself after them and holding them, a half an hour is a TON of work in afternoon summer heat and high humidity. Even in the winter time, dogs who are working SAR are often rested after 2-3 hours. In the summer time in an afternoon of high 90s with high humidity I don't know many who work more than an hour.

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Posted August 15, 2010 at 1:44 pm
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26488/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Sarah

[From the Curmudgeon] Friday TED Talk: Ben Dunlap on Passionate Engagement with the World

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The Anglican Curmudgeon has posted a bit about a man who works in my neck of the woods -- Bernie Dunlap, president of Wofford College.

Don't miss Dr. Dunlap's story about Roger Milliken, textile magnate in Spartanburg, towards the end of the speech.

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Posted August 15, 2010 at 12:58 pm
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26466/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Jackie

UPDATED:  +Louisiana Inhibits Priest?

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UPDATED (AGAIN) The bishop has sent this message out to some members of the diocese. It hasn't hit my email box yet. Wonder if that means anything? hmmmmmm

August 16, 2010

Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
It has been reported to me that there is a great deal of confusion out there about how and why Fr. Townsend Waddill is no longer rector of St. Margaret’s. Here is the simple truth.

Late last month, Fr. Waddill informed me that he would be resigning as rector of St. Margaret’s and that his last day would be August 15th. Last Wednesday night (the 11th), he sent a fax to my office announcing that as of August 4th, he was no longer a priest in the Episcopal Church.

Given this correspondence, I did not feel it was appropriate for Townsend to celebrate or preach at St. Margaret’s on what would have been his last Sunday. However, please note that Fr. Waddill is not under ecclesiastical discipline of any sort at this time.

Apparently, the Waddills have already moved to California. We wish Fr. Waddill success in his new work, and we wish him and his family the best.

Yours in Christ,
+Morris

UPDATE: Fr. Waddill was contacted by a third party and told that Bishop Thompson's office is denying he inhibited Fr. Waddilll. Here is Fr. Waddill's response:

Bishop Thompson made it very clear to me personally in a phone conversation on the night of August 11 that I had “abandoned the communion of this church,” which is an offense punishable by inhibition and deposition, according to Title IV of the Canons of the Episcopal Church. The fact is that I was ordered not to show up at the property, except to have my senior warden audit my rector’s discretionary fund, and even then, I was only to show up under escort by my senior warden. In addition, he told me that I was not allowed to preach that Sunday (August 15), which was the effective date of my resignation that I communicated to the vestry, to Bishop Thompson personally, and to the parish in a letter. That is, in effect, an inhibition. Since he says that he has not inhibited me, then I will take that to mean that I have not abandoned the communion of the church as he originally told me. If that is the case, then his position has changed in the last 48 hours. - Fr. Waddill

Well, that didn't take long. I have it from a very reliable source that the new bishop of Louisiana inhibited the Rev. Townsend Waddill today. Evidently Father Waddill committed the great sin of accepting a job in an Anglican Parish in California.

Developing.....

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Comments:

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Posted August 15, 2010 at 10:22 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26477/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Sarah

Sunday Morning: New Creation vs New Car

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Steve Brown, a PCA theologian and head of Key Life Ministries has some thoughtful words about being a new creation, from which the below is excerpted. If you're interested in receiving monthly sermons on CD or podcast -- free -- you can contact KeyLife and ask to receive them; that ministry has been a huge blessing to me over the years.

I do love the Matthew Arnold poem Steve quotes. The great thing about sensitive, thoughtful pagans like Arnold is that they see the world as it is without God. It is good for Christians to be reminded of what life is like without the ground of our being acknowledged and without being in right relationship with Him.

My new car got me to thinking about new things. Being spiritual and all, I thought about 2 Corinthians 5:17, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come."

Sometimes, I think, we forget the incredible freshness and joy of being a new creation. My old car was functional. Cars have a purpose, to get you from one place to another. The old car did that. Life can be functional too. A comma on a gravestone between the birthday and the death-day says everything that is needful. It can be functional in the same way an old car is functional.

Matthew Arnold wrote in his poem, Rugby Chapel:

Most men eddy about
Here and there - eat and drink,
Chatter and love and hate,
Gather and squander, are raised
Aloft, are hurl`d in the dust,
Striving blindly, achieving
Nothing; and then they die -
Perish; - and no one asks
Who or what they have been,
More than he asks what waves,
In the moonlit solitudes mild
Of the midmost Ocean, have swell`d,
Foam`d for a moment, and gone.

Jesus said in John 10 that he came to give us life-not just functional life where one is born in one hospital and dies in another, but "abundant" life. That life (new creation life) is one of pain (with a purpose), joy (with tears), and freedom to experience both with a depth and authenticity connected to a world in which God is in control. It is a world in which God is working out his purposes in a grand and glorious plan that will be incredibly exciting in the final chapter. "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness" (Lamentations 3:22-23).

There is something else good about a new car, to wit, it's clean. I'm not a slob, but after driving around in a car for five years, there are some stains that simply won't come out. One learns to live with those too. Both the new car and the new creation are clean. "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool" (Isaiah 1:18).

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Posted August 15, 2010 at 8:35 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26487/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Sarah

Sunday Morning: Thoughts From A Pewster On Return From His Vacation

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One of our readers sent this to his fellow office peers on return from his vacation, and I happened to be copied on it. I'm posting it with his permission as it was encouraging to me. I need to re-read Job!

Good morning everyone,

We had a wonderful time on our trip. We did very little, but one thing we did do was visit a "biobay". Puerto Rico has the 3 brightest bays in the world which exhibit a phenomina known as bioluminescence. We kayaked in through a "tunnel" of Mangroves in pitch black darkness with a tour group.

It's the same concept as that of fireflys, but the little plankton here glow when they are disturbed rather than in rythmic patterns under control of the organism.

The water has to have just the right amount of saline, nutrients, temperature, etc. This is a truly special place. When you splash water onto yourself, it looks just like pixiedust on your skin and the water literally glows in a bluish fog. Below is a link to another lagoon in Puerto Rico, and it really is similar to what we saw in the second brightest bay.

http://www.biobay.com/

I'm amazed sometimes at how people can get so caught up the scientific explanation of natural phenomena that they forget the One who created this incredible place called Earth. In spite of all the harshness and suffering in the world, most of it brought on by us humans, there are hints all around of something so much bigger than us and our "issues". Pain and suffering is not the ultimate end or purpose of the Universe.

Job chapter 38-41 is one of my favorite parts of the Bible. It comes after an extended discussion between Job and his three friends about the meaning of suffering, justice, struggle, etc. Various human answers are put forth to explain the human experience -- all of them ultimately inadequate. But in the end, God speaks and turns our thoughts to the wonder and mystery of nature as a sign that we are not in control and our knowledge is ultimately inadequate.

Sometimes when I get frustrated with myself, others and God, I reread those 4 chapters and am always humbled and refocused by this ancient text. Below is small segment for your enjoyment.

Thanks again for covering for me. As you can see I am still "glowing" from my experience!

Job 29:26-27
Is it by your understanding that the hawk soars
and spreads his wings toward the south?
Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up
and makes his nest on high?

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Comments:

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Posted August 15, 2010 at 8:31 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26486/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

David Ould

Bucer’s Influence Upon the English Reformation

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Another great article from the Church Society's Churchman,

Even though his conservatism disappointed some of the most radical Reformers at Cambridge, his personality and sense of purpose sealed the triumph of Protestantism, in that important issues had now been faced. He was successful in destroying parts of the ‘old devotional world’ that existed in England. Though in the past theologians and historians have obscured his influence, his personality and writings shine out, for Bucer a moderate and reasonable man was a good friend to the English Reformation, working well with Cranmer.

Read it all [pdf].

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Comments:

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Posted August 15, 2010 at 12:02 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26485/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

David Ould

Michael Poon: Questions for John Rees

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From the Global South website, the full title of the article is "Questions regarding John Rees’ clarifications of the new Anglican Consultative Council Constitution - Michael Poon". You just know its going to be fun and, indeedm it turns out to be...

I ask for the following clarifications:
1. On what basis should the Anglican Communion – an international body – tie the legal structure of the Anglican Consultative Council, to the British legal system? Can John Rees point to a similar instance in other Christian world Communion (for example the Lutheran World Federation and such like)? ACC could in principle be registered in any country in the world – from Australia to Zimbabwe. Doesn’t the British registration reflect a blatant attempt to solidify British interest and the Church of England establishment over the Anglican Communion? After all, all future legal advisers would need to be well versed in British legal structures.
2. On what capacity is John Rees competent to “vouch for the fact that [the Standing Committee] members are very conscious of the interdependence of the ACC with the Archbishop [of Canterbury] and the Primates and are careful to respect boundaries?” How can personal good will on its own act as guarantee?
3. Related to this, how do the ACC Constitution and the proposed Anglican Communion Covenant relate to each other? Which body is competent to act as final ‘court’ of appeal should conflicts arise? In other words, on what basis and under what processes can the Anglican Communion Covenant interpret the ACC Constitution? Or doesn’t ACC Constitution – with its legal protection – in fact sets the (British) legal parameters within which the Anglican Communion handles inter-Anglican disputes?

Great work Micheal.

For more information on John Rees (and other Communion lawyers), readers may refer back to this article.

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Posted August 14, 2010 at 9:54 pm
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26484/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Sarah

[Off Topic & Political To Boot] Chris Christie: The Scourge of Trenton

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This is a fascinating article from NRO, from which I've excerpted a chunk -- but there is much more where the below came from:

It started in December of 2009. Governor-elect Christie was in the middle of a transition meeting with senior staff when he was presented with a startling document.

It was a chart, prepared by independent Wall Street analysts, showing the state’s cash balances over the previous four years and forecasting future balances. It wasn’t good.

“It was like a picture of a failing company,” says Richard Bagger, Christie’s chief of staff and a veteran of Trenton politics. “It just went down and down. In December it touched zero. Then in March 2010, it plunged into the red.”

That didn’t match the picture painted by the political appointees in the outgoing Corzine administration, who were telling Christie’s transition staff that the state’s operating budget would get it through the rest of the fiscal year. In fact, the state was down to only a few days of cash on hand, and was meeting payroll with expensive short-term borrowing.

But if Christie’s transition team had any doubts about which analysis was closer to the mark, within two hours of the governor’s being sworn in on January 19 career treasury staffers had confirmed the worst: The state was going to default on its obligations the first week of March. The only way out, Christie was told, was more short-term borrowing.

How did New Jersey, once an economic powerhouse, get so low? It starts, but by no means ends, with the recession.

New Jersey’s economy is intimately bound with, and its narrow tax base heavily reliant on, the financial sector. In the wake of the banking collapse, the state suffered a worse unemployment spike than even New York, precipitating what the state treasurer called a “historic revenue collapse.”

This meant that in his last budget, for fiscal year 2010, the outgoing Corzine saw a $7 billion shortfall appear as if from thin air. To meet it he cobbled together federal bailout bucks, tax hikes, worker furloughs, and deferred pension payments — but he didn’t take so much as an Allen wrench to the budget’s structural imbalances, namely, public spending that had doubled as a percentage of GDP over four decades to finance an increasingly Byzantine patchwork of regional “authorities” and “commissions” that crosscut existing state, county, and municipal governance; a morbidly obese pension system underfunded by at least $46 billion; and $52 billion in total outstanding debt — more than $5,000 per resident — backed by everything from cigarette-tax revenue to traffic tickets.The New Jersey that Chris Christie inherited was one that the Mercatus Center at George Mason University had ranked 46th in the Union on its economic-freedom index, and one whose business-tax climate the Tax Foundation had called the worst in the nation. Its narrow tax base had been in a death spiral for years: High-tech, high-paying jobs were fleeing — one Boston College study estimated $70 billion in wealth had left between 2004 and 2008 alone — and being replaced by low-wage, low-tech ones. For decades Trenton had jacked up taxes on the wealth that remained — inspiring new rounds of capital flight — and relied on weak budgetary rules and accounting tricks to kick growing shortfalls down the road. As a July 2009 study by Mercatus’s Eileen Norcross and Frederic Sautet concluded,

the government of New Jersey has resorted to fiscal evasion — avoiding the rules meant to constrain spending — and has sustained spending growth through fiscal illusion, obscuring the full costs of policies by relying on intergovernmental aid and debt to achieve the current level of spending. The state has long emphasized current spending at the expense of higher taxes for future taxpayers. The costs of this approach are now coming due.

Come due they had for Christie, who after less than a day on the job was being advised to borrow his way out of crisis. What he did instead set the tone for everything that followed.

Five weeks later, on February 11, Christie addressed a special joint session of the state legislature, replacing the vague promises of the campaign trail with first principles, and elaborating the constraints under which he was determined to govern:

Our constitution requires a balanced budget. Our commitment requires us to begin the next fiscal year with a prudent opening balance. Our conscience and common sense require us to fix the problem in a way that does not raise taxes on the most overtaxed citizens in America. Our love for our children requires that we do not shove today's problems under the rug only to be discovered again tomorrow. Our sense of decency must require that we stop using tricks that will make next year’s budget problem even worse.

And in an extraordinary move, he then declared a fiscal state of emergency, announcing that by executive order he would impound $2.2 billion in appropriations from a fiscal year that was already seven months gone. That figure represented virtually every dollar the state was not legally obligated to pay out for the remainder of the year. In Bagger’s words, it was “everything that wasn’t nailed down.”

“By doing that so quickly and so dramatically, and by executive action, it really set the stage,” Bagger says. “It was just a very clear declaration that there’s a new reality.”

There was much wailing and teeth-gnashing about the cuts among Democrats. Sweeney accused Christie of “pick[ing] someone else’s pocket,” and senate majority leader Barbara Buono went so far as to say the executive order had “declare[d] martial law” in New Jersey.

This raised the stakes significantly for the FY 2011 budget battle, which was then only beginning. In the year to come, the state would face an $11 billion deficit that made the previous shortfall look like a gratuity. It was a big hole, and Christie needed Democratic votes to close it.The governor had grown increasingly hostile toward the NJEA in the months since he’d introduced his budget, and had essentially stopped taking their phone calls in April, after the union had failed to discipline a functionary for circulating an e-mail praying for his death. But he had no intention of mollycoddling the other side. On March 16, the governor went back before a joint session of the legislature and introduced a $29.3 billion budget that doubled down on his most controversial measures, trimming fat — and muscle, and sinew — from virtually every department and every entitlement in the state.

The budget did small things, like reducing overtime hours, shrinking the state’s fleet of official vehicles, replacing paper with digital filing, and consolidating government office space. It cut the pay and pension eligibility for members of a number of state boards and commissions, many of whose duties required them to do little more than attend once-monthly meetings. It saved $216 million by eliminating a number of wasteful programs, and another $50 million by privatizing others.

But the budget did big things as well. It shrank the state’s major spending programs — including many that were, the governor admitted, not without merit — by reducing base appropriations and either scaling back or eliminating scheduled funding increases. It converted the state’s property-tax rebate system — long funded by borrowing, at interest, to cut checks to homeowners — with tax credits. It cut $466 million in local aid, against Trenton’s trend of corralling more and more municipal tax dollars for the purposes of redistribution, while pushing a constitutional amendment that would limit towns’ ability to raise property taxes in the future.

And like Corzine before him, Christie deferred payments to the state’s pension program to secure $3.1 billion in savings, under the justification that it was imprudent to sink more money into a failing system. But unlike Corzine, Christie pushed through tough pension reforms that rolled back overgenerous payment increases, limited payouts for unused sick leave, and enrolled new workers into 401(k)s. He’d also signed a law requiring public employees to pay at least 1.5 percent of their salaries toward their health benefits, which would save the state and local governments hundreds of millions each year.

But what caused the first and most strident wave of opposition to Christie’s agenda was his decision to slash funding for public education, by some $820 million.

That scary number obscured the fact that, when one subtracted the federal-stimulus goodie bag that Corzine had used to plug the leaky dam of the state’s school-funding formula the previous year, Christie’s budget was actually increasing aid to schools. And it obscured the fact that the cuts topped out at 5 percent per district, and that Christie had offered to restore them in districts where teachers accepted a one-year pay freeze and agreed to increase their contributions to their benefits packages from zero — zero — to 1.5 percent of their salaries.

Of the 591 school districts in the state, fewer than three dozen agreed to these conditions. Instead, the teachers’ unions, led by the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA), invested nearly $6 million to lobby against the budget, running radio and television ads accusing the governor of failing to “protect the quality of our schools” and, gob-smackingly, of going back to “the old Trenton ways of doing business.”

The campaign reached its peak, and its nadir, on May 22, at a march on Trenton organized by public-sector unions. There, NJEA president Barbara Keshishian led as many as 35,000 labor activists — a mere 7 percent of the 460,000 names on the books of the state’s pension system — in shouting down the governor and warning Democrats not to become his “accomplices.”

When a reporter asked Christie what he thought of the protest, he literally shrugged, saying that it had had “absolutely no effect” on him.

“[I hope they] had a good time,” Christie said. “And I hope that it helped spur Trenton’s economy.”
Thereafter, he went from not pulling punches to putting his full weight behind them. When a teacher at a town hall in the borough of Rutherford complained to Christie that his budget would leave her inadequately compensated relative to her education and experience, he told her to find another job, and reminded her that the cuts wouldn’t be necessary if teachers made the most modest concessions.

“Your union said that is the greatest assault on public education in the history of the state,” he told the teacher. And then, to applause: “That’s why the union has no credibility — stupid statements like that.”

Indeed, the war of credibility between the unions and the governor had been settled weeks before, when New Jersey’s school districts put their annual budgets — many of which sought to hike taxes to erase Christie’s cuts — to a taxpayer vote. Nearly three in five failed, a greater number than in any year since 1976.

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Posted August 14, 2010 at 12:31 pm
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26465/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Matt Kennedy

Matthew Fox, Episcopal Priest:  Cosmic Techno Mass

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No comment

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Posted August 13, 2010 at 9:09 pm
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26483/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Sarah

My Ode To Jerry Rice Continues: Running Hills

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If you can watch that and not want to get out there and run, you're just not alive!

Jerry Rice's hill workout -- at 49.

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Posted August 13, 2010 at 12:20 pm
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26464/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Sarah

[Entirely Off Topic] Bird Rescue

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[Hat tip: Episcopalienated]

You will learn many things from this blog about rescuing and caring for birds. For one thing -- baby birds are spectacularly unattractive creatures.

For another, human beings are passing strange -- as this blog and the blogger's interests and passions demonstrate yet again -- but often in a very Godly way. We are made in His image and it is very good.

You will also learn how to hand feed a bird, bird first aid, an artificial bird beak for an eagle, the evils of house cats, the nobility of pigeons, and the extinction of the passenger pigeon.

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Posted August 13, 2010 at 11:35 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26455/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Greg Griffith

Episcopal Church Dominates Communion’s Standing Committee

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Diversity!

The Anglican Communion's Standing Committee met in London from July 23-27 for what proved to be a telling event. As the meeting progressed and information from sources inside and outside the meeting emerged, the dominance of biblical revisionists and Episcopal Church allies within the committee was made clearer and clearer.

Before the meeting began, the orthodox voice and witness on the committee had already been diminished by the resignations of the Bishop of Iran, Azad Marshall, and the Archbishop of West Africa, Justice Akrofi. These two resignations from the 14-member group only compounded the effect of the earlier resignations of Archbishops Henry Orombi (Uganda) in December, 2009 and Mouneer Anis (Jerusalem and the Middle East) in February of this year. These resignations were not the only concerns going into this meeting.

At its last meeting in December of 2009, the Standing Committee violated its own constitution in electing a priest, the Rev. Canon Janet Trisk (South Africa), as a replacement for a lay representative to the committee.

The Anglican Communion Institute (ACI) and others openly asked whether or not the Standing Committee would rectify this violation of their canons by re-selecting a suitable lay representative. Also, it was not lost on the ACI that Canon Trisk at the meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) in Jamaica in 2009 supported, along with TEC, leaving out the enforcement section of the proposed Anglican Covenant.

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Posted August 13, 2010 at 9:28 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26482/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Greg Griffith

Judge Vaughn Walker: You Can’t Appeal My Decision on Prop 8

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This is a descent into absurdity - Walker is claiming that Prop 8 supporters may not have the right to appeal his ruling, since none of them (as of yet, anyway) want to marry a same-sex spouse. I suppose that could change pretty quickly should somebody decide to get sassy, but for now Walker has set up a Catch-22 which in a sane world would result in his impeachment and removal from the bench: He's saying that a) Gays can start marrying in California, and b) People who oppose his decision can't appeal as long as they aren't trying to marry someone of the same sex.

This would be like his ruling that pedophiles are now free to molest children legally, and no one can appeal his decision unless they are in the process of trying to molest children themselves.

This guy needs to be stopped.

The federal judge who overturned California's same-sex marriage ban has more bad news for the measure's sponsors: he not only is unwilling to keep gay couples from marrying beyond next Wednesday, he doubts the ban's backers have the right to challenge his ruling.

Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker on Thursday rejected a request to delay his decision striking down Proposition 8 from taking effect until high courts can take up an appeal lodged by its supporters. One of the reasons, the judge said, is he's not sure the proponents have the authority to appeal since they would not be affected by or responsible for implementing his ruling.

By contrast, same-sex couples are being denied their constitutional rights every day they are prohibited from marrying, Walker said.

The ban's backers "point to harm resulting from a 'cloud of uncertainty' surrounding the validity of marriages performed after judgment is entered but before proponents' appeal is resolved," he said. "Proponents have not, however, argued that any of them seek to wed a same-sex spouse."

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Comments:

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Posted August 13, 2010 at 9:16 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26481/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Greg Griffith

UNC Changes Abortion Requirement in Student Health Insurance Coverage

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As Ed Morrissey points out at Hot Air, it's not clear yet whether opting out will reduce a student's premium, or whether they will simply pay the same price they would have with the coverage, but suffice it to say that there seems to be some movement in the right direction, and it's due to the exposure by Students for Life we mentioned Tuesday:

The University of North Carolina will let students remove coverage for elective abortions from their university-sponsored health insurance after a national group complained about the coverage.

UNC system President Erskine Bowles on Thursday directed a student insurance company to contact students who have bought a policy this fall and give them the chance to opt out of that coverage.

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Comments:

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Posted August 13, 2010 at 9:05 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26480/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Greg Griffith

Episcopal Church Hits Bottom, Digs

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The Rev. David Bailey was ordained and consecrated bishop of the Episcopal Church in Navajoland Aug. 7 in a ceremony rife with tradition, joy and hope at the Brooks/Isham Performing Arts Center in Kirtland, New Mexico.

Several hundred Diné -- many wearing traditional Navajo clothing -- visitors and guests attended the 11 a.m. service. Medicine Man Herbert Yazzie led the procession with prayers, followed by Catharine Plummer, widow of the late Navajo Bishop Steven Plummer.

She and Cathlena Plummer, using sacred blessing bowls and eagle feathers, smudged the gathering with smoldering sage and sweetgrass incense, a traditional ritual of blessing and cleansing AND IT GOES ON AND ON AND ON LIKE THIS SOMEBODY HAND ME MY PISTOL.

Columns of fire would be too good for these people.

Also... Mentions in the article of Jesus Christ: 0.

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Posted August 13, 2010 at 7:25 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26479/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Greg Griffith

The ‘Most Pressing Question’ for Christopher Hitchens

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Damon Linker at The New Republic:

So a Christian considers pride a sin and a (Jewish) atheist does not. That’s hardly news. But my colleague’s—and Levi’s, and Hitchens’—positions were actually about more than this. At a deeper level they were about anthropology and what be called the epistemology of religious truth.

In their statements, Levi and Hitchens imply that a person’s capacity to determine the truth depends on his or her ability to think calmly, coolly, dispassionately. It depends on the capacity to bracket aspects of one’s subjectivity (like intense emotions, including fear of imminent death) that might distort one’s judgment or obstruct the effort to achieve an unbiased, objective view of the world in itself. This is the outlook of the scientist (Levi was a chemist), the philosopher, the champion of rational enlightenment, the secular intellectual and social critic. From this standpoint, the terrified, irrational effusions of a man facing his own extinction are no more to be trusted than a blind man’s account of a crime scene: each witness lacks the capacity to perceive, make sense of, and accurately judge the essential facts. Far more reliable are the sober, critical reflections of a man in good health, protected from danger, insulated from threats to his well being. That, for Levi and Hitchens, is a man at his best and most capable of determining the truth of things.

Religious believers—including my devoutly religious colleague at First Things—make very different assumptions about the proper path to truth and what constitutes a man at his best. As Rod Dreher noted in a post about Hitchens’ recent statements, a Christian believes that the experience of suffering discloses essential truths that cannot be discovered or known in any other way. What are these truths? That we are fundamentally weak and needy creatures. That we are anxious animals, longing for someone or something to soothe us, to protect us from and relieve us of our worries. That we greedily crave good things for ourselves—many of which (fame, fortune, honor, glory) only the luckiest will ever acquire, and some of which (happiness unmixed with sorrow) no one will ever enjoy within the limits of our finite lives.

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Comments:

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Posted August 13, 2010 at 6:52 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26478/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Sarah

[An Off Topic 10 Minutes of Bliss] Surprise Reunions

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Someday when we get to heaven there will be years of surprise reunions that are even better than these on earth -- and a surprise reunion with the One who is the ground of our being and our all in all. What a day that will be.

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Posted August 12, 2010 at 5:48 pm
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26476/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Sarah

[Off Topic] UK Daily Mail: Disaster that never was

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This seems like a case of claiming that once disaster is somewhat averted by heroic measures, that it never existed in the first place.

Nevertheless, there are some good points made in this article from the Daily Mail, where there is more:

It began when a respected Time magazine environmental writer voiced the near-heretical proposition: that the effects of the Deepwater Horizon disaster on April 20 had been massively hyped.

His article was largely based on the opinions of Professor Ivan van Heerden, a brilliant but controversial marine scientist fired by Louisiana State University after publishing a book about Hurricane Katrina that said cataclysmic flooding was inevitable because the protection given to the coast was wholly inadequate.

He said: ‘There is just no data to suggest this is an environmental disaster - although BP lied about the size of the oil spill, we’re not seeing catastrophic impacts.’

Emboldened by the academic’s willingness to go against the accepted wisdom, other leading scientists have concurred, with similar views being expressed in influential U.S. newspapers such as the New York Times and Washington Post.

It was against this background that the Obama administration made its own dramatic U-turn this week.

In a humiliating climb-down, it conceded in an official report from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that the ‘vast majority’ of the spilled oil had already gone.

The rest, it said, had probably diluted and didn’t appear to pose much of a threat.

According to 25 leading U.S. government and independent scientists, the feared catastrophe to the coast’s fragile ecosystem had been averted.

The cynical spin from Washington suggested that Obama had successfully browbeaten BP into mopping up its mess - with Mother Nature lending a helping hand.

What more suitably upbeat message with which to mark the president’s 49th birthday?

So were the doom-mongers really so wrong, and if so, then why?

Why was one of Britain’s greatest companies so demonised? Why did America’s politicians and president so hysterically over-react?

In order to get to the bottom of one of the most shameful buck-passing operations in recent times, I spent this week with those involved at the sharp end.

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Comments:

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Posted August 12, 2010 at 1:16 pm
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26461/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Greg Griffith

Top Ten Gay Marriage False “Facts” Part 1

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Frank Turek at TownHall.Com:

Having certain sexual desires—whether you were “born” with them or acquired them sometime in life—does not mean that you are being discriminated against if the law doesn’t allow the behavior you desire. Good laws discriminate against behavior. They do not discriminate against people. If Walker’s false “fact” was a real fact, we’d have to redefine marriage to include not just same sex couples, but also relatives, multiple partners, children or any other sexual relationship people desire. After all, those are “sexual orientations” too.

In other words, there should be no legal class of “gay” or “straight,” just a legal class called “person.” And it doesn’t matter whether persons desire sex with the same or opposite sex, or whether they desire sex with children, parents, multiple partners or farm animals. What matters is whether the behavior desired is something the country should prohibit, permit or promote. And that’s a job for the people, not judges.

2. “California has no interest in asking gays and lesbians to change their sexual orientation or in reducing the number of gays and lesbians in California.” (FF 47) Other than helping them avoid disease and live longer, absolutely no reason. As I document here, health problems are higher and life spans shorter for homosexuals. This has touched me personally (and perhaps someone you know as well)—a childhood friend of mine died from AIDS at the age of 36. How is it wise public policy to endorse behavior that leads to such tragic results? That’s exactly what same-sex marriage does—it endorses homosexual behavior, which results in serious health problems and shorter life spans. Permitting unhealthy behavior is one thing, but endorsing it is quite another.

But won’t same-sex marriage help reduce gay health issues? Not likely. See Judge Walker’s next false fact.

3. “Same-sex couples are identical to opposite-sex couples in the characteristics relevant to the ability to form successful marital unions.” (FF 48) What does “successful” mean? It has nothing to do with children according to Judge Walker. In his “the stork brings children” universe, marriage is merely about coupling; procreation is just incidental to it. He thinks a “successful” marriage is merely about commitment, but he can’t even support that case.

In another instance of special pleading, Judge Walker ignores the evidence that at least half of committed homosexual relationships are open as even the New York Times reported. (Other studies found even higher rates of promiscuity and infidelity.) This is so well known it’s a travesty that Judge Walker claims exactly the opposite is true. The Times reported, “None of this is news in the gay community, but few will speak publicly about it. Of the dozen people in open relationships contacted for this column, no one would agree to use his or her full name, citing privacy concerns. They also worried that discussing the subject could undermine the legal fight for same-sex marriage.” Maybe Judge Walker was worried too, and that’s why he didn’t bother mentioning this real fact with his false facts.

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Comments:

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Posted August 12, 2010 at 10:11 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26475/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

David Ould

Australian Church Legal Tribunal Rules Against Diaconal Administration

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sydneyanglicans.net have a helpful summary of the situation...

An Anglican judicial panel has disagreed with Sydney’s Synod on the introduction of diaconal administration of the Lord’s Supper.

The Diocese of Sydney Synod in 2008 overwhelmingly agreed there was no impediment to persons other than a presbyter administering Holy Communion.

The national church’s Appellate Tribunal - consisting of three bishops and four senior lawyers - has given an advisory opinion both on lay administration, which is not sanctioned in the Diocese of Sydney and on administration by deacons, which is practised.

Since the 2008 Synod resolution, some Sydney parishes have allowed deacons to administer the Lord Supper where a presbyter is not able to do so.

Lay administration is neither authorised nor sanctioned in the Diocese of Sydney.

Although both forms are quite distinct, they have often been confused in the debate.

The tribunal’s advisory opinion jointly considered lay and diaconal administration and concluded that a general synod canon would be required to implement either practice.

A previous opinion had declared that lay and diaconal administration of the Lord’s Supper was consistent with Scripture, the Book of Common Prayer, and the 39 Articles, which are the bedrock of the National Constitution of the Anglican Church of Australia.

The matter was referred to the tribunal in 2009.

The tribunal was not asked to consider the theological merits of persons other than a presbyter administering the Lord’s Supper, given a previous opinion which endorsed its doctrinal validity.

Instead, it considered only legal argument.

A spokesman for the Diocese of Sydney says “The advisory opinion of the Tribunal will doubtless receive attention at the Diocesan Synod to be held in October.”

Doubtless. We'll bring you news of that response later in the year as it happens.

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Comments:

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Posted August 12, 2010 at 7:38 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26474/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Sarah

[My Continuing Ode To Jerry Rice] Rice Coaching, Training With Young Receivers

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Now if you don't want to get out there and run, you're just not alive!

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Comments:

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Posted August 11, 2010 at 12:14 pm
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26463/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Sarah

[Off Topic & Political To Boot] Conservative Nostalgia Is Misplaced

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A good article from National Review, where there is more:

Let’s start with the Left, which certainly has different motives than Klinghoffer’s. The urge to lament how far today’s conservatives have fallen from the “golden age” of Buckley & Co. is a familiar gambit. You see, this is what critics on the left always say: “If only today’s conservatives were as decent or intellectual or patriotic as those of yesteryear.”

The best conservatives are always dead; the worst are always alive and influential. When Buckley and Kristol, not to mention Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, were alive, they were hated and vilified by the same sorts of people who now claim to miss the old gang. The gold standard of the dead is always a cudgel, used to beat back the living.

As for the Right, there are many competing agendas among those lamenting the populist enthusiasms of the Right today. Some seem to want to displace and replace today’s leaders; others are simply beautiful losers in forgotten struggles eager to tear down the winners.

But what undergirds a lot of this is simply nostalgia. A conservative populism is sweeping the land, and although I think it is for the most part justified and beneficial, you cannot expect millions of people to get very angry — deservedly angry — and expect everyone to behave as if it’s an Oxford seminar.

Buckley, Kristol, and Neuhaus (and Reagan and Goldwater) understood and appreciated the hurly-burly of American democracy. Buckley famously insisted he’d rather be governed by 2,000 random names in the Boston phone book than the faculty of Harvard. He passionately defended Joseph McCarthy, and he admired J. Bracken Lee, the 1950s Utah governor who makes Sarah Palin look like Sandra Day O’Connor on Ambien. Oh, and he was a Rush Limbaugh dittohead. Kristol was an admirer of the Christian Right and a supporter of the populist tax revolts of the 1970s. Neuhaus was a leading champion of the religious revival on the right.

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Posted August 11, 2010 at 12:10 pm
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26457/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Greg Griffith

The Slow, Whining Death of British Christianity

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I'm not sure what's more worthy of ridicule - the glee that this guy has over Britain's rejection of Christianity, or his stupefying ignorance of the fact that Christianity's decline there has accompanied by an even more precipitous rise in Islam, which, as far as troublesome, intolerant "superstitions" go, makes Christianity look like something designed by the ACLU and Richard Dawkins.

Really - the article is that deeply stupid.

One example: Hari asks, "If we started allowing religious people to break basic anti-discrimination laws, where would we stop?"

Well, evidently not at accommodating that most tolerant and liberal of legal systems - sharia courts.

Perhaps in the new caliphate, Hari will have his head chopped off last.

[Former Archbishop of Canterbury George] Carey and the CofE demand Christians be allowed to break the law requiring them to treat gay people equally when providing a service to the general public -- and that any case where a Christian feels discriminated against should be judged by a special court of "sensitive" Christians. If we started allowing religious people to break basic anti-discrimination laws, where would we stop? Until 1975, the Mormon Church said black people didn't have souls. (They only changed their mind the day the Supreme Court ruled this was illegal, and God niftily appeared to their leader that morning and announced blacks were ensouled after all.) Would we let a Mormon registrar refuse to marry black people? Would it be "Mormonophobia" to object?

When Lord Chief Justice Laws, who is a Christian himself, ruled the exemptions demanded by Carey would be "irrational, divisive, and arbitrary", he threw an extraordinary tantrum and said Christians might begin to engage in "civil unrest". When I saw Carey make these threats on television, red-faced and rageful, it made me think of a nasty child in the playground who had been beating up the gay kids and spitting at the girls for years and is finally told to stop - only to start bawling that he's the one who is being picked on.

As their dusty Churches crumble because nobody wants to go there, the few remaining Christians in Britain will only become more angry and uncomprehending. Let them. We can't stop this hysterical toy-tossing stop us from turning our country into a secular democracy where everyone has the same rights, and nobody is granted special rights just because they claim their ideas come from an invisible supernatural being. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a Holy Lamb of God to carve into kebabs - it's our new national dish. Amen, and hallelujah.

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Posted August 11, 2010 at 11:28 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26473/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Greg Griffith

Christ Church Philadelphia Rector to +Bennison: Don’t Come Back

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Or more precisely:

Dear Charles:

Now that the Court of Review for the Trial of a Bishop has overturned your sentence of deposition, and you may continue to be a Bishop in the Episcopal Church, you have the right to return as Bishop of Pennsylvania. But is it right to do so?

I urge you to give this question the deepest consideration with your best advisers before making your final decision on returning August 16.

Let me tell you my advice, so you know.

To be Bishop is to unify the Church, but your return would further divide our diocese. To be Bishop is to build up the Church, but your return would tear down the fragile foundations of trust and hope that have been built these past two years. My strong belief is that your return will do more harm than good, create more anger and less reconciliation, and hinder, not advance, the Church’s mission in our diocese. These realities may be unfair and unjust, but I believe them to be true.

Further, to be Bishop is to be a pastor, and for you to be a pastor, there must be enough trust and sense of security so that “the sheep may safely graze.”

As the opinion of the Court of Review said forcefully, accurately and rightly, you committed no acts of sexual abuse or exploitation of a minor. But that just doesn’t matter at this point. Then and now, the Church is guilty of sexual abuse and exploitation of the young and the vulnerable. Then and now, the Church, promises to be the guardian of a gated, protected sheepfold of pastoral safety for its members. But, the shepherds charged with protecting the fold have yet been able to keep sexual abusers out. Then and now, those abusers have not climbed into the sheepfold, like the robber and the thief, “some other way,” but have been let in by the very shepherds who promise that the sheep may safely graze. Consequently, the Church does not appear safe to those who might consider coming into our sheepfold, and it does not feel safe to those in the fold who have experienced the failure of the Church to protect our own.

It may not be right or fair, but you embody that failure. You were a shepherd then, and to those who have suffered abuse, or care about the safety of our Church, it will not matter that these crimes happened decades ago. If you return as our Bishop, many in your flock will not feel safe, and you will not be able to be our pastor. It doesn’t matter that so many others were part of the failure, or that others have viciously used the abuse the woman suffered so long ago to accomplish their own ecclesiastical ends. Truly, I believe the most pastoral act would be, as a sacrifice for the creation of pastoral safety, not to return as our Diocesan bishop. Now that your ministry is restored, serve the Church to rebuild the shattered trust and safety we need to serve the sheep entrusted to us.

You said after the ruling, “I think I have shared in Christ’s crucifixion.” First, a visceral comment: Trust me, the woman so abused and exploited in the Episcopal Church while a member of St. Mark’s, Upland has shared far more of the terror, shame, degradation, pain and humiliation of what Jesus experienced at Calvary. By His wounds, not by yours, will she be healed. We are obligated to her and the countless others who have suffered the reality of crucifixion at the hands, not of Pilate, but of our Church, to create a place of true safety within our sheepfold. Your return hinders, if not prevents, progress.

Second, Jesus willingly made the sacrifice of his life for the benefit of others. What Christ did for the world, we are called to do. To share in Christ’s crucifixion is to die to self and selfish needs so that Christ will be raised in us. I ask you to prayerfully consider making the sacrifice of not returning as Bishop of the Diocese of Pennsylvania for the benefit of many who want to believe that the Episcopal Church can be safe.

Your brother in Christ,

The Rev. Timothy B. Safford, Rector
Christ Church, Philadelphia

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Posted August 11, 2010 at 11:23 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26472/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Greg Griffith

Episcopal Church Pokes Itself In The Eye Again

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Three paragraphs of remarkable clarity, one of which I quote here. Hie thee hence:

The Bennison case tells us much of what we, I suppose, already knew about the Episcopal “Church”. That Bishop Bennison can repeatedly and publicly question foundational principles of the faith without fear of reprisal is bad enough. That the church hierarchy cares more about technical legal niceties than it does about whether its own bishops are in fact believers confirms that the Episcopalians have forfeited their right to claim to be any kind of church.

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Posted August 11, 2010 at 11:20 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26471/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Sarah

The Way TEC Does Business: Let The Buyer Beware!

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This is an excellent article by Philip Turner of the ACI, laying out very clearly the tactics that TEC has used and is using in its attempt to remake the Anglican Communion. There are two errors in this article, however, which I assume proceed from the overall bias of the ACI.

First, TEC did not agree at all to the three moratoria at its General Convention -- in particular it manifestly did not agree with the proscription against conducting same sex unions, but rather left it open to local option, and those same sex unions continued unabated and escalating in some 20 dioceses at least, with the approval of General Convention. The fact that some institutionalists shamefully wished to pretend otherwise and lied to their dioceses, parishes, and other peers in the worldwide Anglican Communion is merely an indication of their own character. But there was no question -- none at all -- once the resolutions were passed at GC 2006, that same sex unions were local option.

Second, the disastrous Jamaica meeting of the ACC did indeed result in a substantially weakened Section Four of the Covenant, not one that was "rejigged" but "essentially as before." The "rejigged" Section Four was utterly gutted, so much so that it led to many provinces pulling back from being willing to sign on to it. This leads me to pointing out the part that is left out of this otherwise wonderful essay describing TEC's modus operandi -- and that is the complicity of Rowan Williams, from his deliberately premature invitations to Lambeth of the bishops of TEC who approved of and participated in the consecration of Gene Robinson, to his assignment of the Joint Standing Committee, rather than the Primates as a whole, to be the one's to monitor TEC's response at the New Orleans HOB meeting, to his parliamentary maneuverings at Jamaica, to many more grotesque and corrupt incidents of obvious manipulation of the process in order to reach his own desired outcome, which is no discipline of the Anglican Communion by excluding TEC. He has, in fact, collaborated with TEC apparatchiks to assist them in their delays and avoidance of consequences, and it has been shameful behavior. Thankfully, history will judge and clearly communicate his actions to future generations of Anglicans, exposed as those actions have been in particular over the past two years.

So not only does Dr. Turner describe "The Way TEC Does Business" but he also describes the way Rowan Williams does business. That is, in fact, one of the problems. It's not simply that TEC is a rogue diocese, bent on inflicting its own unwanted theology and other gospel on other provinces and the Communion as a whole. It is that Rowan Williams has willfully and openly supported their continued role in the Communion.

At any rate, despite the caveats above, it's a great article and spells out TEC's MO very clearly and eloquently -- make sure you read the whole piece, from which the below is excerpted.

Since the Standing Committee has decided that, in so far as it is concerned, TEC’s position in the Communion is to be decided through an indefinite period of dialogue, it is essential to understand just how TEC understands this process. TEC’s recent history makes one thing perfectly clear. Dialogue, for TEC, is not a process of disciplined argument designed to clarify issues, expose false reasoning, and arrive at a truth both parties can hold. It is not even a process of critical examination that occurs before taking a disputed action. Rather it is an aggressive form of self-promotion built around “talking points” rather than disciplined argument—talking points that are meant to beat down opposition to a disputed action already taken. In short, the decision made by the Standing Committee is in reality a decision to allow TEC more time to gain acceptance for its actions. It is not, in TEC’s mind, a time to subject those actions to “consequences” or to critical examination.

TEC’s recent history reveals that it now has a standard way of doing business—one that exposes its pleas for dialogue as disingenuous. What is that way? One makes changes in disputed aspects of the life and order of the church by breaking the rules and then calling for conversation rather than “consequences.” This standard way of doing business carries with it its own very idiosyncratic notion of dialogue–one that, by laying claim to the prophet’s mantle, will not allow the possibility that one could be wrong and one’s opponent right. When TEC acts, TEC acts (according to TEC) in the power of the Holy Spirit; and when TEC speaks, TEC speaks (according to TEC) in the power of the Holy Spirit. To be in opposition, therefore, is to oppose both the Holy Spirit and the justice it is God’s purpose to bring to the world. These are shocking conclusions but, given TEC’s recent history, they are unavoidable conclusions–conclusions that if ignored by the Instruments of Communion and the member Provinces, will lead to the demise of the Anglican Communion.

TEC’s recent history makes the truth of these charges abundantly plain. Let us begin with the first of the more recent challenges to the Communion’s common life–the ordination of women to the priesthood. Before I begin this tale, I wish to make it clear that I am a strong supporter of the ordination of women both to the Presbyterate and to the Episcopate. What I do not support is the way in which TEC made this change. The way in which it was done opened Pandora’s box, and now TEC seeks to spread the bad habits it learned though this event to the rest of the Communion.

Go back to the year 1974. The General Convention of The Episcopal Church (then ECUSA) had twice refused (by a narrow vote) to approve the ordination of women to the priesthood. After the second refusal, three retired bishops ordained 11 female deacons as priests. The bishops said they broke the rules as an “obedient” and “prophetic” protest against oppression and an act of solidarity with those who are oppressed.

What were the consequences of breaking the rules? There was an attempt to bring the bishops to trial, but it failed despite committee advice to the contrary. The House of Bishops did decry the action of their colleagues and went on to pass a motion of censure; but since the bishops were all retired, the motion was of little effect. It was of so little effect that the following year Bishop George Barrett, yet another retired bishop, ordained four more women to the priesthood. Once again, no meaningful consequences followed. On their part, the women involved said that they consented to this action because to wait for another General Convention was to affirm in principle the concept that discrimination against ordaining women to the priesthood may be practiced in the church until the majority changes its mind and votes. It probably does not need saying, but in case the point is missed, very similar reasons are given by TEC for its recent breach of the moratoria in the case of Mary Glasspool’s ordination as Suffragan Bishop of Los Angeles.

The basic point, however, is that a pattern was established. There was a prohibition by TEC’s governing body of a proposed course of action. The action was undertaken anyway as a “prophetic witness.” There followed assertions that those who acted against the rules ought to be free from consequences because of the righteousness of their actions. The consequences that ensued were indeed minimal. Continuing conversation was substituted for ecclesial discipline. A new way of effecting change had been established. If the constitutional and canonical processes do not go your way, act anyway, deny the applicability of consequences, and then call for conversation.

The same pattern appeared again shortly after the struggle over women’s ordination when the issue of ordaining people engaged in same gender sexual relations arose. In 1977 Bishop Paul Moore of the Episcopal Diocese of New York ordained a professed and sexually active lesbian to the priesthood. In response, the bishops did no more than express “disapproval.” The next General Convention passed a resolution saying, “It is not appropriate for this Church to ordain a practicing homosexual or any person who is engaged in heterosexual relations outside marriage.”

It appeared that the General Convention had spoken definitively on this matter, but some 20 bishops dissented, citing wording in the resolution that might be taken to mean that the resolution was only “recommendary” and not “prescriptive.” Recommendation was most certainly not the intent of the General Convention! Nonetheless, the 20 bishops found an unintended loophole, claimed the prophet’s mantle and stated that they would not implement the resolution in their dioceses.

In 1989, 1990, and 1991 the dioceses of Washington DC and Newark ordained men involved in same gender relations. The justification for these actions was that new experience and knowledge make the ordination of gay people a “justice issue” that must be furthered by a “prophetic” episcopate. This time, one of the offending bishops, Walter Righter of Newark, was brought to trial; but he was acquitted–not on grounds that the action of General Convention was “recommendary” rather than “prescriptive,” but on grounds that his action was not contrary to the “core doctrine” of the Episcopal Church.

It was now well established! Within TEC prohibited actions (of a progressive sort at any rate) are not to be subject to meaningful consequences. Within TEC, just as women’s ordination was losing its status as a matter of reception and becoming a requirement, the question of ordaining persons engaged in same gender sexual relations was becoming what the ordination of women once had been–a matter of “local option” (open to local choice by each diocese). The consecration of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire, despite universal opposition by the Instruments of Communion (including resolution 1:10 of the Lambeth Conference of Bishops), had now become for TEC (according to the way it understands its relation to the rest of the Communion) also a matter of local option. Apparently, it had also become a matter of sufficient weight to render inoperative Resolution B020 of the 1991 General Convention, which stated clearly that the potentially divisive issues concerning human sexuality “should not be resolved by the Episcopal Church on its own.” This resolution had never been repealed or changed. It was simply ignored. The well-established pattern persisted. If the rules don’t suit a political agenda, break the rules, seek to avoid meaningful consequences and then ask to talk about the matter.

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Posted August 11, 2010 at 7:38 am
The URL for this article is http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/26460/

©2010 Stand Firm, LLC. All rights reserved. Permission to copy and distribute free of charge is granted, provided this notice, the logo, and the web site address are visible on all copies. For permission for use in for-profit publications, please email contact@standfirminfaith.com.

Sarah

[Entirely Off Topic] Closing Out A Tuesday Evening: Notorious Black Bear Returns To Jersey

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Now see . . . this is nothing more than a stimulating game to The Notorious Black Bear, along the lines of my dog's Kong or a Busy Bee. He's not just going to have a little refreshing snack -- he'll enjoy working through the nice puzzle too.