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Ouch

Stephen Bates comments:

Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, was lecturing politicians in his Wilberforce lecture in Hull last night on the importance of rediscovering their moral energy. He also stressed the necessity of C of E bishops retaining their position in the House of Lords to continue offering "independent moral comment". Meanwhile, central Africa's Anglican bishops have taken a different moral line by saying the west ought to give Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe, a break and lift sanctions. Their number includes the Bishop of Harare, Nolbert Kunonga, a Mugabe crony accused by parishioners of inciting murder and seizing land, in contrast to the call by the country's Catholic bishops for Mugabe to stand down. No sign yet that our archbishop plans to disinvite them from next year's Lambeth conference.

James Graham captures my thoughts to a T:

Rowan Williams, like so many other public figures over the past couple of months, sought to co-opt William Wilberforce in a speech yesterday. In an act of stupendous logical contortion, he uses Wilberforce, an elected politician (albeit in an era of rotten boroughs) as a tool for his argument against reforming the House of Lords:

“It is important in our current debates about the Upper House of Parliament we take seriously the role of such a House in offering channels of independent moral comment”

I wouldn’t dream of claiming that Wilberforce was a secularist, but it has to be pointed out that it wasn’t the Bishops in the Lords that lead the campaign for the abolition of the slave trade. And they aren’t providing moral leadership in the House of Lords today - indeed, they barely deign to show up at all. There may well be a decline of moral leadership in modern politics today, but that is helped, not hindered, by a church which desperately clings to unelected and unaccountable power and evangelises about the desirability for us to adopt an Anglican version of the caliphate.

Well, I'm not sure I'd go so far as that last phrase. But the ABC eviscerates his own argument when his policy recommendation is to leave seats for C of E Bishops in the House of Lords. If there is a place for the voice of religion in government why should it only be the voice of the Church of England? Let's have a competition of voices.

Not a dead letter

From the letters to the editor of The Times:

Sir, Matthew Parris’s article “Shout your doubt out loud” (April 21 ) was really rather odd.

Whenever Christians embrace a cause dear to his heart, such as gay rights, he seems to dismiss it as a panic measure in the face of declining influence. He should be pleased that his views are gaining support.

Could it be that his rejection of religious belief relies upon religion remaining exactly as it was when he first rejected it? If it changes, particularly in ways that he should welcome, it ceases to be such an easy target.

Requiring religious belief to remain unchanged and unchanging through changing times is at least part of what we mean by the word “fundamentalism”. It is a dangerous and discredited tendency to which atheists are clearly not immune.

THE RT REV DR JOHN SAXBEE Bishop of Lincoln

The evangelical wing of The Episcopal Church may be sharpening their knives over this.

For the link my thanks go out to one of my favorite human browsers, Kendall Harmon of titusonenine. Here's a link to the comments over at titusonenine.

A mass of composers

Chanticleer has commissioned a Mass. From five composers for the five portions: Kyrie, Credo, Sanctus, Gloria and Agnus Dei.

The section no one wanted? Credo. From the New York Times report:

Equally resolute about not compromising her beliefs was the Israeli-born composer Shulamit Ran. When Mr. Jennings asked her to contribute, she said she could do so only if she were free to compose “from a Jewish perspective.” Mr. Jennings encouraged her along those lines, but there was a problem: By the time Ms. Ran had agreed to participate, four of the five sections had been claimed by other composers. The only one left — the one nobody else wanted — was the Credo, the central article of the Catholic faith. Among other declarations, it states: “I believe in one holy, Catholic and Apostolic church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins. And I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.”

StatGuy reviews Anglican support for Mugabe

StatGuy has an incredibly thorough review not just of recent events, but other events leading up to them. Included is a link to the pastoral letter.

Advice from a seminary president concerning Virginia Tech

The words of Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, as reported in EthicsDaily.com:

"See, all you had to do was have six or eight rush him right at that time, and 32 people wouldn't have died," Patterson said.
...
"Now one more time, how many or you are male students at Southwestern Seminary? Get your hands up. Alright, God bless you, and I am counting on you. Do you understand me? I'm counting on you, and I know you will."
...
Patterson didn't mention guns in Wednesday's chapel comments, but he has said in the past that America's No. 1 problem is a "war against boys," including establishing laws to prevent men from hunting and owning guns, producing a generation of fathers disconnected from their sons. "Today there is a war against boys," Patterson said in 2003 at Sportsman's Safari sponsored by First Baptist Church of Lavaca, Ark. "You've got to make little girls out of your little boys."
...
On Wednesday, Patterson also said things might have been different at Virginia Tech if someone had reached out to Cho before he carried out his attack.

"[The] total testimony of everybody was that this young man who did this deed was troubled and very lonely," he said.

In The Sunday Times Sarah Baxter wrote, "the horrific slaughter revealed not only the poisons lurking in popular culture but the crisis of young males in a feminised society."

We knew Episcopalians and Southern Baptists were different. But who knew The Sunday Times and Southern Baptists could be on the same page?

COE Bishop upset at Zimbabwean distortion of his statements

The Church News Daily reports:

THE BISHOP of Croydon, the Rt Rev Nicholas Baines has stringently denied an African news report which said he accused the British media of "peddling lies" about Zimbabwe.

He informed The Church of England Newspaper that the account of his comments in The Herald, given after a visit to the Bishop of Central Zimbabwe was "absolute nonsense" and is said to be "very upset" about the African newspaper article, published yesterday.

The story, based on a visit by Bishop Baines to his Zimbabwean counterpart, Bishop Ishmael Mukuwanda of the Central Region Diocese, reported Baines to have said that "London has no right to dictate how Harare should run its affairs".

The article in a newspaper owned by the Zimbabwe government claimed that Bishop Baines told the African Bishop that he and his delegation had visited Zimbabwe to "see we things for ourselves" rather than listening to the "propopaganda on our television stations."

For the comple Church of England Newspaper article click here and then select the daily issue dated 20 April 2007.

Williams on religion and government

From his Sunday Times essay, "Down with Godless Government":

But if the state enacts or perpetuates in the corporate life of the nation what is directly contrary to the Christian understanding of God’s purpose, then Christian activism in respect of changing the law is justified, primarily when the state is responsible for — so to speak — compromising the morality of all its citizens.
...
This makes sense, though, only if it is possible to convince those who run things in the public sphere that there are human values and ethical norms to which an entire society is answerable. In our relativist climate, this is very difficult. What tends to happen is that nothing much is left as a substantive moral basis for public life except a poorly defined principle of tolerance or avoidance of mutual harm. The idea that you can give substance to a common social ethic, something to which society as a whole can be held accountable, is unfashionable and unwelcome. Even from the point of view of many who have no religious commitment, there is a recognition that this is a thin diet.

Sounds good. But if there is vociferous disagreement amongst Christians disagree, then what? For example, in the application of their values and norms to the full inclusion of homosexuals? Disagreement this strong points back to basic differences in values and norms derived from our faith. Can we even articulate those differences to each other, let alone to the state?

It is not our relativist climate that has brought some Christians to reject past teachings on homosexuality. Nor is it mere tolerance. It derives from an openness to question where the church may be in error of inclusion and exclusion regarding sin. Is homosexuality sin? Is slavery sin? There is no longer any debate within the church that it wrongly excluded the latter. In time the church will conclude it is an error to include homosexuality in the list of sins.

By the way, you cannot merely list sins. A list does not guide action. Sin is about whether our heart is with God or not. It is never is, of course, but we strive.

Tom Horwood has a column in The Guardian, "Religious leaders should be hopeful, not defensive, in public debate", that serves as a nice companion piece to Williams'. An extract:

There is a new mood of defensiveness within faith communities, the symptom of a fear about where libertarian social trends are leading. It has not always been like this. Skilful religious leaders have engaged in debate and argued persuasively for positive change. Wilberforce, Gandhi and Martin Luther King took unpopular stances, but pointed to a better way for all, inspired by faith.

Global South leader Malango in the news

Archbishop Mulango has been in the news in the past few days.

Over at The Lead I've got a post on the recent pastoral letter from the Province of Central Africa supporting the Mugabi regime in Zimbabwe.

The other news, which Ruth Gledhill posted on April 20th but I've just read, concerns the story of the poisoning death of an Anglican missionary in the Diocese of Malawi. Here's an abbreviated version of Gledhill's telling of the tale:

On Remembrance Day last year, a 73-year-old English missionary priest died in Malawi. ... Now, it turns out, he was poisoned. Mutterings that all was not right with his death began a few weeks back, and police in Africa have this week confirmed the worst.
...
The diocese of Lake Malawi was in the public eye at about this time when Acton vicar Nicholas Henderson was appointed its new bishop, and then his appointment was blocked by the Global South leader Bernard Malango and by the diocese's court of confirmation because of Henderson's links with the liberal theology of the Modern Churchpeople's Union. The court described Henderson as a 'man of unsound faith'.
...
In spite of strong support in the diocese, which has long links with Henderson's west London flock, Malango appointed another bishop, Leonard Mwenda, in Henderson's place. Mwenda's enthronement was conducted under police guard, amid scenes of stone-throwing. Mwenda in turn appointed Rodney Hunter as an assistant priest at Lake Malawi's Anglican cathedral.

A few months later, Father Rodney was dead. Poisoned.

Police enquiries are continuing but I have to ask: have the Anglican Communion's gay wars claimed their first victim?

That, from Ruth Gledhill. Evidently it is unfair to say she is entirely in sync with the Global South.

I had not known of Malango's appointment of a bishop over the objections of the diocese although I have heard that archbishops in other provinces have more power than our Presiding Bishop. I guess he's not as reasonable a man as Archbishop Akinola. Gledhill provides this background post at Thinking Anglicans for more on the events in 2005 surrounding the appointment of Henderson and his replacement by Mwenda.

As someone has put it, it's pretty remarkable for Malango to sit in judgment of The Episcopal Church.

Dumb headline

Here.

More gays abstain until marriage?

USA Today:

Fewer gay couples are choosing to enter civil unions or register as domestic partners, says Carisa Cunningham of Boston's Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders. "People are waiting for marriage," she says, noting the advent of gay marriage in Massachusetts has boosted expectations.

Armstrong distracts from ACI's message?

Tom Roberts: "Elves- I recommend #54 from Armstrong+ be relocated to a top level post.
Unless you wish to have this thread diverge from its own top level."

The subject of the thread? "The Anglican Communion Institute: questions we avoid at our peril".

It all depends on what the meaning of "our" is. And who's asking the questions.

Among other things, Armstrong wrote:

The goal of the Diocese of Colorado has been and continues to be my own ruin as a human being, the destruction of my family, and the end of the ACI. Collateral damage is Grace Church–but what is that to an already dying institution. This is obvious on every level to anyone with half their brain tied behind their head.

The ACI had written:

It is simply the case that the recent actions of the House of Bishops bring to the surface differences between large sections of TEC and the AC that may well prove irreconcilable. They also reveal divisions within TEC that may well prove equally intractable.

Take The Lead

There's a new blog in town. Take a look at The Lead here.

The Lead is one of several blogs at the Episcopal Café. More about the just-opened Episcopal Café here.

The blogs at Episcopal Café:

• The Lead covers news items of the day of interest to an Episcopalian audience
• The Daily Episcopalian provides a daily essay or editorial often on or about the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion.
• Speaking to the Soul "includes sermons, reflections, multimedia meditations and excerpts from books on spirituality."
• Art Blog

Drop in today and take a peek around the place. We are just getting started.

We? Full disclosure: I will be serving on The Lead and on the editorial board of Episcopal Café. More about the contributors here.

Episcopal Café is frankly evangelical, following in the footsteps of The Four Evangelists.

US evangelicals aim to influence European law

The Christian Science Monitor reports:

In Britain, the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), an organization founded by American evangelical leaders, is funding a lawsuit brought by a Christian man who was fired for refusing to work on Sunday. It is also helping to develop the legal strategy.

• In Sweden, ADF played a key role in persuading the Supreme Court to dismiss charges against Ake Green, a pastor who was convicted of hate-crime charges after he delivered a sermon in which he called gays a "deep cancerous tumor in the entire society."
• In Aruba and the Czech Republic, Pat Robertson's legal organization, the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), helped defeat bills that would have legalized same-sex unions.
• In France, ACLJ affiliate ECLJ (the European Center for Law and Justice), is staging a legal challenge against an antisect law that it says is being used to clamp down on evangelical Christian churches.
•And on the European Union level, ECLJ is lobbying to block funding for embryonic stem-cell research.
...
Why are American groups going to such lengths to shape the laws in other countries?
"We realized that if we didn't try to mold precedents abroad, they could come back to hurt us, and that the American legal system as we know might change," says Benjamin Bull, chief counsel for the ADF.

He notes that, for example, US judges have drawn on foreign precedents and international standards in several key cases, such as the Supreme Court's 2003 ruling in Lawrence v. Texas, which legalized sodomy in the Lone Star State.
...
At the moment, IHRG and Schuzh are involved in more than a dozen home-schooling cases wending their way through the German court system and have appealed to the European Court of Human Rights to hear several of them.

One of their top priorities is the case of the 15-year-old home-schooled girl Melissa Busekros. Her parents say that her classmates would mock her faith, kneeling in front of her with their hands pressed together in prayer and saying, "Hail Mary." (Though the Busekroses are evangelical Christians, the students in heavily Roman Catholic Bavaria didn't appear to recognize the distinction.) The last straw came when she started failing Latin and math, at which point her parents began home-schooling her.

After more than two years of trying to get Melissa back in school, state officials pulled her from her home in February and placed her in a psychiatric ward. The Erlangen youth-welfare office declined to comment on her case, but a psychological evaluation that the office ordered said Melissa was suffering from emotional problems, including "school phobia," and had to be removed from her home for [her] own well-being. She is now living with a foster family.

My emphasis. Read it here. Thanks to titusonenine for the link.

How do we square these statements?

Statement 1:

I am the President of ACI. I was the President of SEAD. ... I am aware of our actual work at ACI, and 90% at least goes by my eyes, and it is work that happens out of the generosity of those contributing. No stipends are paid, and this costs Grace Church nothing in the strict sense. We have a web site, and that is paid for by Grace Church, as I understand it. [link]
...
When at SEAD I planned and ran over 15 conferences and 3 House of Studies. We kept a tight financial ship and of course ‘made no profit’ — we were a not for profit organisation. But we succeeded admirably, to my mind. The problem was how to keep up that kind of pace, without any donor base beyond a few kind and generous Bishops. [link]
...
Someone once put it nicely, 'six guys and a web-site.' We counted on donations to support travel and subsistence, and this was handled by the Executive Director. [link]

- The Rev. Prof. Chris Seitz, President of the Anglican Communion Institute

Statement 2 [link]:

AI and ACI are both ministries of the parish but are managed with separate accounts that are audited annually with the rest of the parish ministries.

ACI/AI are funded by private donations–and all money raised for these ministries is always spent specifically for the purposes for which it was raised. None of this has been for salaries, but for conferences and publishing, in most recent years for the sort of work Chris Seitz has described.

Since 2003 until just this past Fall, Grace Church has funded the ACI from its own monies to maintain its independence and so that it would be free from political pressures that outside fund raising naturally involves.

No money disappeared into these ministries, but was used for the purposes it was intended.

The ACI/AI has [sic? have?] granted scholarships for a number of theological and educational ventures over the years, but those funds are separate from the working money given for ACI. In other words I raised money specifically for the purpose of supporting these other various educational ventures–which included clergy and lay continuing education, seminary education expenses for third world students, writing projects and the like.

-The Rev. Donald Armstrong, Rector, Grace Church and St. Stephens, and Executive Director, ACI

Statement 3 [link]:

They just walked away from 85 percent of their funding.... I don’t know what ACI is without that.

- Alan Crippen, spokesman for Grace and Armstrong, President John Jay Institute for Faith, Society and Law Colorado Springs, Colorado

Very often an organization's Board does much of its fund raising. I would be interested in knowing if the friendly bishops on the Board of Directors of the ACI used monies from their diocesan discretionary funds to support ACI. And if they asked for audits of how donations to ACI were used.

The ACI said in its statement severing ties to Grace:

ACI is not now and was never incorporated. Its “board” has been a loosely-knit network of sympathetic consultants within our work on behalf of the Communion. There was and is no budget, no compensation, and no formal structure.

Not sure why "board" is in quotes. The "Board of Directors" are prominently listed on the ACI website:

Board Members

The Most Rev'd Dr George Carey (former Archbishop of Canterbury)
The Most Rev'd Drexel Wellington Gomez (Archbishop of the West Indies )
The Rt Rev'd John W. Howe (Episcopal Bishop of Central Florida)
The Rt Rev'd Alpha Mohamed (Bishop of the Rift Valley)
The Rt Rev'd Edward L. Salmon, Jr (Bishop of South Carolina)
The Rt Rev'd James M. Stanton (Bishop of Dallas)
The Very Rev'd Dr Paul Zahl (Dean of Trinity School For Ministry)
The Rev'd Dr George Sumner (Dean of Wycliffe Seminary in Toronto)
Professor Russell Reno (Creighton University)
Mrs Elizabeth Cooper (Charleston. SC)

UPDATE. Don Armstrong says more about ACI's funding:

... the vestry did not want to leave dangling $170,000 that had been spent by ACI since 2003 and thus categorized it as a loan–when in fact by resolution in 2003 the vestry had previously decided to fund ACI with money restricted from the diocese by parishioners–and by the Diocese’s own determination had to be used beyond the parish. So ACI owes the parish nothing. All ACI funds were spent for flying the ACI team literally around the world ....

Two Candidates Announced for Next Dean and President of Virginia Theological Seminary

Here's the link.

The candidates are Dr. Ian Markham, Dean of Hartford Seminary, and The Rt. Rev. J. Neil Alexander, ThD, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta.

Archbishop of Canterbury announces he will meet with Episcopal Church

Excerpting from Episcopal Life:

Speaking in a news conference in Toronto, Williams said he would make the visit together with members of the Standing Committee of the Primates, of which Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori is a member, and the Anglican Consultative Council.
...
Williams said the meeting will take place during the House of Bishops' previously scheduled fall gathering in New Orleans September 20-25.

"I am glad that he has accepted this invitation, and I know the other bishops will be glad, as well," Jefferts Schori told ENS in an interview following Williams' announcement. "We look forward to a conversation together in September."

Jefferts Schori said that she has received replies from some members of the Joint Standing Committee indicating their plans to attend. Replies from other members are still pending at this time, she said.

This will be the first time Williams has met with the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops or attended a meeting of any of the church's leadership bodies such as General Convention or Executive Council.
...
Jefferts Schori has underscored in earlier interviews that the House of Bishops' resolution inviting the Archbishop of Canterbury to meet with them was passed unanimously.

The article includes this reminder:

In their communiqué, the Primates also gave the House of Bishops, via a response from Jefferts Schori, until September 30 to agree to "make an unequivocal common covenant that the bishops will not authorise any Rite of Blessing for same-sex unions in their dioceses or through General Convention" and "confirm that the passing of Resolution B033 of the 75th General Convention means that a candidate for episcopal orders living in a same-sex union shall not receive the necessary consent unless some new consensus on these matters emerges across the Communion."

Archbishop of Canterbury to visit US

The press release from his office is here: "this autumn."

This autumn? Very timely.

An Easter sermon you may want to miss

Quote:

Over the last year every aspect of my life and work has been put under a very expensive microscope.

I have been stripped bare and publicly humiliated.

Literally purged of every vestige of self respect and dignity I had worked a life time to achieve.

Six days later:

A defiant Rev. Donald Armstrong told his longtime parish Saturday he never stole money from the church.
...
During his presentation, he said the vestry never showed this level of concern about financial matters, and suggested former vestry members have turned against him because they’re scared the bishop will sue them for previously shirking their financial responsibilities.
...
If congregants loyal to the Episcopal Church win, Armstrong hinted a vestry member — whose Nebraska bank loaned the church nearly $2.5 million — might call the loan.

More:

"I have done nothing wrong so I actually sleep well at night," Armstrong told more than 300 people gathered for a lively, sometimes contentious, three-hour meeting in the sanctuary of Grace and St. Stephen’s Church in Colorado Springs.
...
On Saturday, Armstrong shot back that if the signers were so in the dark about how the parish’s finances were handled, then they also have to admit they failed their fiduciary responsbility as vestry members. He also suggested they signed the statement because they were afraid of the bishop.

"That’s a wrong thing to say!" shouted Connie Fischer, a parishioner of more than eight years, from near the back of the church. "He’s so arrogant,’ she added, referring to Armstrong.

These tokens

Christopher Howse writing in The Telegraph:

Jesus "for us men, and for our salvation came down from heaven," the Nicene Creed says, "And was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate." That is plain, but when I tried to look into the mechanics, I began to realise that mechanics are not a good description of God's dealings with the world.

Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in a new book Tokens of Trust (Canterbury Press, £9.99) summarises different ways of understanding the atonement.

For a start, "it became possible to speak of Jesus as a sacrifice," he writes.

Jewish thinking had already formulated the idea that "a life of obedience was a kind of sacrifice", and Jesus's perfect harmony with God's purpose led him to his death.

Dr Williams notes other images. "Jesus's death is a ransom, paid to our kidnappers (the powers of destruction); it is a punishment that we deserve, voluntarily borne by another, who is innocent; it is even a triumphant nailing up of a cancelled invoice.

"It's important to be aware of all these images and try to see why they are used; equally important, though, not to treat them as if they were theories that explain why Jesus died. The single central thing is the conviction that for us to be at peace Jesus's life had to be given up."

While scripture speaks truly, misunderstandings should be cleared up. It is a repulsive invention to suppose that it is to Satan that Jesus pays a price for our release. Nor is a ransom paid to God.

My emphasis.