Dear Brothers and Sisters
www.virtueonline.org
December 31, 2009

It was a year of upheaval from which Anglican leaders might well breathe a sigh of relief that it is over.

It was a year of turmoil and upheaval that saw two resolutions on sexuality passed at The Episcopal Church's 76th annual General Convention in California. Those actions promise to further isolate The Episcopal Church from the Anglican mainstream. It was the year of the birth of a new Anglican province on North American soil; a lesbian was elected bishop in an ultra-liberal Episcopal diocese; litigation increased over property in the US and Canada; the Pope offered a "safe haven" for traditionalist Anglicans across the world; and a Covenant was finalized that many believe holds little promise of keeping an increasingly feuding and fractured communion together.

It is a year that Dr. Rowan Williams, the putative head of the Anglican Communion, might well hope will never be repeated. Somehow he managed to keep the communion together even as its most traditional wing got an offer to flee to bigger and better spiritual pastures.

Liberals and broad church gave Williams a pass, but revisionists and homosexual groups like Changing Attitude and Integrity ripped the ABC for not sounding declarative enough on sodomy and for appearing to favor "listening" to his Ugandan partners on homosexuality while he berated The Episcopal Church for electing a non-celibate lesbian to be a bishop.

Pansexualists didn't want him to actually think about anything. They just wanted him to react against the Ugandans and when he didn't, they ripped him apart. When he did say something about a proposed gay law that the Uganda government might pass (which he later condemned), it was too little, too late. The Anglican Church in Uganda has set up a commission to look into the legislation. They oppose the death penalty.

No group is more unforgiving than Anglican homosexuals scorned or allegedly scorned. God forbid that anyone should condemn their behavior. They have won the secular culture wars and now their sights are set on twisting the church into their own abominable image.

Evangelicals, ever polite, just go on doing what they have always done...preaching the gospel, making new disciples, building churches and starting new dioceses and provinces. It's hard work for which they receive little thanks. But they are quietly re-forming the Anglican Communion and letting those who have ears to hear, that the Good News of God's redeeming love is available to all.

That they are the majority in the Anglican Communion is lost on liberals who have no ability to make churches grow and who spend a lot of their time and money on litigation screaming at orthodox for being "fundamentalists" and homophobes" while they continue to wither and die. One could forgive them if they are busy launching new gospel-driven movements. The revisionists have no one to blame but themselves.

You can read my Year in Review here or in today's digest. http://tinyurl.com/ydbxtxk

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Dr. Louie Crew, the Episcopal Church's leading emeritus homosexual, doesn't like the covenant because he believes it discriminates against, well, homosexuals. He wrote an article saying so. VOL took a long hard look at his statement, his use of history and the Bible. http://tinyurl.com/ydrh98v

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The COVENANT to bind us all together is making its way around the Anglican Communion with some interesting observations.

I have written a major reflection on this and, regardless of who does or does not sign off on it, nothing will change the slow realignment of the Anglican Communion. GAFCON, FCA, ACNA, ANiC are all done deals. They are not going to stop regardless of what Rowan Williams says or does. You can read it here or in today's digest. http://tinyurl.com/ybnhgy5

The General Convention of the Episcopal Church cannot consider the Covenant until its next meeting, in 2012. If a change to its constitution is required, that could not be made until 2015. However, Aotearoa, New Zealand, and Polynesia said that some respondents felt that the Communion had "committed a vast amount of time and research into the search for covenantal wording that would be acceptable to the whole Church, and yet it has not addressed the insurmountable problem of the complete intransigence of some dioceses to any process that would accept certain 'debated categories' of people as full members of the Church".

Interpretation: "complete intransigence" applies to Communion Partner dioceses in TEC who may sign on if TEC as a province does not. "Debated categories" are of course pansexualists who are at odds with the vast majority of Anglicans worldwide.

Archbishops representing Anglican churches in the southern hemisphere will formally accept a covenant aimed at promoting unity within the worldwide denomination when they meet in Singapore 2010.

The Global South Anglican, which brings together 20 of the 38 provinces (churches led by archbishops or their counterparts) in the Anglican Communion and in which the Bishop of Singapore and Archbishop of the Church of the Province of Southeast Asia The Most Revd Dr John Chew serves as incumbent general secretary, will be holding its fourth meeting or 'encounter' from 19 to 23 April.

The text of the Covenant does not prescribe what should happen to current Communion members who choose not to enter into the Covenant. The working group said that it had felt it "not appropriate to address this question within the text of the Covenant".

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In his year end sermon, Archbishop Rowan Williams talks about the joy of giving and receiving. He closed with this text citing John 1:12. "To all who accept him he gives power and authority to become children of God, learning and growing into endless life and joy...

However, a closer examination of this text and how it concludes is somewhat different from the ABC's version. John 1:12 says this: "But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name." Now that is a wholly different ending of the text. The first makes an assumption the text does not allow. The second affirms that those who become the children God do so not because of a "right", but because of the authority inherent in the gospel and because they believe in His name. If you have not made such a commitment, there will be no "endless life and joy", in fact quite the opposite. We are not called to amend the text, but to accept it as it is and exegete it.

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The Queen was amused during a church service at Sandringham after the Bishop of Norwich suggested that John The Baptist would have made a "wonderful' contestant on reality program "I'm A Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here'." The Rt. Rev Graham James told members of the congregation on the Norfolk estate that John the Baptist's diet of wild honey and locusts would have made him an ideal participant on the show. In the past, contestants on the program have been encouraged to eat green ants, witchety grubs and fish eyes. The comment drew laughter from the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince of Wales and Princes William and Harry but the Right Rev James told them: "It does you no credit that you know of that program."

In December 2007, Bishop James told royals attending a service at the church that people who festooned their homes in Christmas lights were creating "minor ecological disaster zones". That year the Sandringham Estate had been decorated with half a mile of Christmas lights for a seasonal festival.

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The Archbishops of Canterbury and York have condemned the recent resurgence of police intimidation of Anglicans in Zimbabwe. Church goers, including clergy and local bishops, have been barred from entering their churches and threatened with arrest and violence.

"We condemn unequivocally any move to deny people their basic right to worship. To prevent people from worshipping in their churches on Christmas Day - unable to receive the church's message of hope - is a further blow to civil liberties in Zimbabwe. Such unprovoked intimidation of worshippers by the police is completely unacceptable and indicative of the continued and persistent oppression by state instruments of those perceived to be in opposition.

"We stand in support of the dioceses of Harare and Manicaland under The Church of the Province of Central Africa in this regard. For many people in Zimbabwe, ground down by unceasing unemployment and lack of basic services, the church is their only lifeline."

Following the financial appeal for Zimbabwe headed by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, with USPG, earlier this year, the Anglican dioceses have been involved in extensive relief and development programs, working successfully with local government to serve all in their communities, regardless of religion or political affiliation. Anglicans are playing a key role at all levels of society, working with government and community organizations to rebuild Zimbabwe. However following the excommunication of two Anglican bishops closely aligned to the ruling party, local churches have been subjected to targeted disruption of services, weddings and some community outreach work, in blatant contravention of court rulings in their favor.

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Church of England membership numbers stabilize? New survey results are showing two interesting trends in English religious life. Fewer people are willing to identify as being part of a specific church, but about the same number of people are identifying themselves as Christian or Anglican as have been for some time now.

From an article on the results in the "Church Times" blog:

If [...] you ask: Do you regard yourself as a Christian, an Anglican, etc.? you get a consistently higher figure. This is the form of question asked in the 2001 UK Government Census, and independent surveys continue to confirm its finding that seven people in ten describe themselves as Christian.

It's not that there isn't a decline in religious adherence; but we know that half of people continue to regard themselves as Anglican, and so these new figures appear to overstate that decline.

Prebendary Barley also suggested that the Anglican decline at the end of the 20th century had virtually halted. Local church counts of worshippers for the last nine years record 1.7 million Church of England worshippers each month in each year.

The question for us in the Episcopal Church is whether or not the Church of England's attendance stabilization after years of decline represents our future. The Episcopal Church attendance numbers are dropping right now, though not quite as steeply as they did in England over the past decades. Does the English experience point to our future, or does our experience point to theirs?

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A little history. The US Episcopal Church was the first of the 38 Anglican provinces worldwide to consecrate women bishops. New Zealand, Australia, Canada and Cuba have since followed suit. Barbara Harris became the Anglican Communion's first woman bishop in 1989 when she was elected suffragan in Massachusetts. Canon Mary Glasspool, who was elected the communion's first lesbian bishop in Los Angeles just a few days ago, nominated her. Besides Scotland, churches and provinces in the Anglican Communion that have voted to consecrate women, but not yet done so include Bangladesh, Brazil, Central America, Ireland, Japan, Mexico, North India, Philippines, Southern Africa and Sudan. Provinces with no ordained women at all include Central Africa, Jerusalem and the Middle East, Melanesia, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, South East Asia and Tanzania. Opponents of women bishops use the writings of St. Paul to argue that a woman cannot be "head" over a man, and that Jesus set a precedent by selecting men only as his disciples.

Supporters argue from the point of view of justice, context and modern society, but also note that Jesus had many senior women followers, but that their roles have been downgraded by generations of male church leaders.

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A 'Begging Burglar' broke into an Episcopal Church to avoid freezing temperatures in the DIOCESE OF BETHLEHEM. St. Peter's Episcopal Church reported a series of unusual break-ins. Police said a burglar broke into a church on East Jefferson Street in Butler County. It turns out he may have had a change of heart.

According to police, the person responsible for the break-ins may be homeless, freezing and just trying to get out of the cold. One parishioner said the person is being called the begging burglar. He left a note behind using a child's crayon asking for forgiveness. The note said, "I'm sorry about the window, I needed a place to stay tonight. I will repay you when the time is right. P.S. I think God forgives me." Police said he cleaned up the mess and then left a second note to warn children to avoid the mess. "It's very sad that somebody had to break in then sleep in the room," said a member of the church. The pastor of the church said he would never press charges and would have helped the person responsible including a voucher for a night or two in a hotel.

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In the DIOCESE OF NORTH CAROLINA, a dead parish has opened as a funeral home. In Kings Mountain, the former Trinity Episcopal Church, a Kings Mountain landmark for nearly 50 years, opened in November as Clay-Barnette Funeral Home, their second location. On sunny days, the light gleams in through colorful windows, honoring saints of the Christian faith. "There's a history there, so certainly a familiarity with that church and a great history for a lot of folks in Kings Mountain," said Kayce Bester, co-owner with her husband, Eric.

"It's appropriate," she said, "for the building to be able to continue its ministry and extend that comfort to families in a different capacity." The expansion is "something that we had talked about for several years," Bester said. "This seemed to be a natural choice for us in the neighboring community. Said an Episcopal observer, it is sort of fitting that a dying Episcopal church in a liberal diocese should see its churches being sold for funeral homes.

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San Antonio is playing a key role in Anglican migration to Catholicism. In October, Pope Benedict XVI created a new structure within the Catholic Church to receive disenchanted Anglicans. San Antonio stands to play a huge role in that effort, according to a local news report.

Because of controversy over relaxed rules on abortion, contraception, and women and homosexual priests, the Rev. Christopher Phillips decided to give up everything. Taking his wife and his children, he left a promising career as an Episcopal priest to become Catholic. And, with the blessing of Pope John Paul II in 1983, he became a Catholic priest in San Antonio.

In the last quarter of a century, Father Christopher Phillips has watched his parish at Our Lady of the Atonement grow from 18 people to a congregation of more than 2,000.

Fr. Phillips doesn't like the title of pioneer, but his story -- once unheard of -- may now help an untold number of Anglicans and Episcopalians who want to join the Catholic fold.

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Two Malawi men risked arrest to become the first homosexual couple to wed in the African nation of MALAWI. They became the first gay couple to publicly tie the knot, the Nation newspaper reported on Monday, risking arrest in the conservative southern African state where homosexuality is illegal. Tiwonge Chimbalanga and Steven Monjeza were married in a traditional ceremony in southern Malawi on Saturday, attracting hundreds of curious onlookers. "We met at church where we both pray and we have been together for the last five months ... I have never been interested in a woman," Mr Monjeza told The Nation newspaper. Homosexuality is banned in Malawi and carries a maximum sentence of 14 years.

Three years ago, the Anglican Church sent pro-homosexual rights cleric Nickie Henderson to head a diocese in rural Malawi. The congregation did not accept him and protests led to the death of a church member.

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VOL wants to thank all its readers, website posters and commentators for their contribution to this ministry in 2009. We especially want to recognize Doug, Owen, Brian and many others who sent stories to VOL from around the globe. I want to thank my own staff including John, Robert, Paul, Sherry, Mary Ann and Michael for their magnificent work in keeping the website up and running, for stories written, editing done, legal oversight and research accomplished that made and keeps VirtueOnline the Anglican Communion's leader in world news and commentary.

I want to recognize the work of the Rev. Dr. Robert Sanders and his efforts to make VOL's Global Anglican Theological Institute (GATI) accessible to thousands of readers in the Global South. We will expand that aspect of VOL's ministry in 2010.

If you have made a financial contribution to VOL this past year, you should have received an acknowledgement either by mail or e-mail. If you have not heard from us, please send me a personal note to david@virtueonline.org and we will rectify that immediately.

If you would like to send a donation to VOL and date it December 2009 we will send you an acknowledgment for 2009 even if we receive it in 2010.

Thank you all for your kind support. It appears we will be able to carry on in 2010. I shall be attending two conferences in late January - Mere Anglican in Charleston, SC and AMiA in Greensboro in NC. Both these conferences are being held back to back.

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In Christ,

David