So it is all the more worrying that much of this seems to have been unravelling in the last few weeks. President Musharraf's sacking of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court has caused renewed conflict between secular political parties and the religious opposition.
Read moreA corollary to this observation is that the children of the super-rich of previous generations are either no longer on Forbes's list, or they are much further down the list. Inherited wealth tends to dissipate rather than grow. The Rockefellers and Carnegies and Morgans are no longer on the list, which is now dominated by names unknown just 30 years ago.
Read moreSecondly, 'the likelihood is that Paul is thinking about pederasty' (sex with a boy) since 'there was no other form of male homosexuality in the Greco-Roman world', and that he is opposing it because of the humiliation and exploitation experienced by the youths involved.2 All one can say is the text itself contains no hint of it.
Read moreSo if the second most senior figure in the Church of England is prepared to affirm a form of Anglican identity at such a sensitive moment with a bishop who has consented to an action which has given the clearest possible signal of her church's intention to depart from the historic faith of the Scriptures, what should we conclude?
Read moreThis, of course, was before 2003 when the Episcopal Church clearly signalled its abandonment of Communion norms, in spite of warnings from the Primates that the consecration of a practising homosexual bishop would 'tear the fabric of the Communion'.
It is not too much to say that everything has changed in the Anglican Communion as a result of the consecration of Gene Robinson
Read moreNow, in the last couple of days, a situation has arisen which may settle the issue once and for all. He has invited all but a handful of the 800 or so bishops of the Anglican communion to their regular conference next year.
Read moreLet me explain, with respect to the latter point.
Read more(N.B. I am focusing on the seminary I know best, but there is a surely parallel story to be told for Nashotah House and the Reformed Episcopal seminaries. It strikes me that Trinity and the REC seminaries should naturally serve an evangelical Anglican constituency which seeks to be catholic-minded and Nashotah should naturally serve an Anglo-catholic constituency that seeks to be evangelically-minded.)
Read moreThe Episcopal Church, like other cherished institutions, is indwelt by a transcendent force that promises life beyond the grave for its present membership: namely, the massive financial contributions squirreled away by its ancestors -- the enormous inventory of tax exempt properties, bank accounts, trust funds, artifacts and other historic treasures of generations long deceased. In this Church the dead could go on burying their dead for generations to come before anyone noticed.
Read moreI think Lambeth is playing for what the Archbishop of Canterbury thinks is the middle ground, but he has sorely misjudged the reality. The middle is very small. Most of the American Episcopal Church is trapped under highly revisionist and pantheistic leaders, for whom Jesus Christ is not the only way. Thus, numbers-wise, TEC has little middle ground, with the revisionists in the majority, the orthodox secondary, and those in the middle last in number.
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