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Satanic opposition. The world's opposition is strong and subtle. And behind these things stands the devil, bent on 'taking men alive' and keeping them prisoner. For the devil hates the gospel and uses all his strength and cunning to obstruct its progress, now by perverting it in the mouths of those who preach it, now by frightening them into silence through persecution or ridicule, now by persuading them to advanced beyond it into some fancy novelty, now by making them so busy with defending the gospel that they have no time to proclaim it. --- From "The Message of 2 Timothy" by John R.W. Stott
Judgment now. Like eternal life, judgment begins now. As we respond to Christ, so we are being judged. The final judgment will be but the public declaration of a destiny already reaped. --- From 'The coming Judge' (sermon on Jn. 12:48), by John R.W. Stott at All Souls Langham Place, London.
Fasting is wonderful because it tramples our sins like a dirty weed, while it cultivates and raises truth like a flower. --- St. John Chrysostom
Let us be very clear about this. There is no diversity across cultural or geographical lines in the Anglican Communion about sexual behavior despite what you might here from liberals. What Nigerian, Ugandan, Kenyan and Rwandan Anglicans believe about sexual behavior is exactly the same as what orthodox Anglicans in North America believe. It has nothing to do with where you were born, the color of your skin, how much education you have had, or haven't had, or who your parents were. It is about what Scripture says and what we are taught to believe and practice. --- David W. Virtue, VOL
Dear Brothers and Sisters
www.virtueonline.org
March 24, 2010
The fallout from the Glasspool election is fast becoming a global Anglican concern with global consequences. The forthcoming consecration of an avowed lesbian to be a Suffragan Bishop in the Diocese of Los Angeles highlights what many of us have known for a long time - that The Episcopal Church has no intention of listening to anybody especially the Archbishop of Canterbury who has repeatedly called for "gracious restraint" on any new non-celibate homo-genital nominees for bishop. He has called the upcoming consecration by Mrs. Katharine Jefferts Schori "regrettable." The Archbishop said he would be engaging in "further consultation" about the implications and consequences of the approval of Glasspool.
That and two bucks still won't buy you a cup of Starbuck's coffee. Nor will it get you a free "get out of hell" pass when the time comes. The Episcopal Church has declared for all the world to see that nothing and nobody will stop its inevitable slide towards secularization and compromise with the culture by overlaying it with lace, a creed few believe in, occasional smells and bells and a Bible that they are too embarrassed to literally believe, or if they do, to believe its content on such mundane issues as human sexual behavior.
Today's lead story captures comments from a number of groups including an "open" evangelical group in the UK known as FULCRUM who state the following: "This is a clear rejection of the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Primates' Meeting and the Anglican Consultative Council. We believe that it is vitally important for the Primates' Meeting planned for January 2011 to go ahead, and that for this to happen the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church should not be invited to attend. Actions have consequences." Indeed.
Will Dr. Williams heed their call? A frequent contributor to FULCRUM's blog is Durham Bishop N.T. Wright and so, for no other reason, Williams might listen to his old friend. If he doesn't, then to all intents and purposes, we have spiritual anarchy in the Anglican Communion. When the Fourth Global South to South delegates meet next month in Singapore, they just might issue a statement to that effect. We will find out then if actions have consequences.
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In the Diocese of Connecticut a state superior court judge ruled March 15 that the real and personal property of Bishop Seabury Episcopal Church
Fr. Ron Gauss, parish rector, told VOL that his parish is now under CANA and Bishop Martyn Minns, and they will appeal the ruling. "We are disappointed in the judge's findings, but we will continue in the Ministry of Bishop Seabury Church and the proclamation of the Gospel."
Fr. Gauss is one of the "Connecticut Six," who applied for retirement from active TEC ministry in October 2007. On Nov. 13, 2007, Bishop Smith approved his application to retire on Dec. 1. On Nov. 14, the wardens of Bishop Seabury Church wrote to Smith informing him that the parish had affiliated with CANA.
"The issue is the gospel. The diocese and the national church have departed from the historic faith over unbiblical innovations," said Gauss.
In his March 15 order, Stevens prohibited Gauss and his associates from using the parish's real and personal property and ordered them immediately to turn that property over to church officials. The judge also barred the defendants from interfering with those officials' right to immediate possession, custody and control of the property. Finally, he prohibited the defendants from "wasting, selling, transferring, conveying or encumbering" any of the property.
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The Rev. Dr. Leander Harding of Trinity School for Ministry has joined the slate of nominees to become the ninth bishop of the Diocese of the Rio Grande. Harding is Trinity's dean of church relations and seminary advancement and associate professor of pastoral theology.
The diocese, which encompasses New Mexico and the southwestern corner of Texas, announced Harding's nomination by petition on March 20. The electing convention will convene April 24.
The diocese has been up and down in recent years with the most recent tenant at diocesan headquarters Bishop Jeffrey Steenson (2005–07) fleeing to Rome. His predecessor was M. Terence Kelshaw (1989–2005), a solid evangelical. The real test will be if Harding wins, will he obtain consents? He is orthodox in faith and morals. One can't imagine he won't get the third degree from the Standing Committees and HOB as Mark Lawrence did when he became Bishop of South Carolina. Time will tell.
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Prior to the Fourth Global South to South Encounter Dr. Michael Poon issued a paper on The Anglican Communion as Communion of Churches: on the historic significance of the Anglican Covenant.
The paper aims to draw out the historic significance of the Anglican Covenant for the Anglican Communion. It begins by examining the nature and reasons of the "ecclesial deficit" of the Anglican Communion. It points out that the ecclesial status of the Anglican Communion has never been clarified. The Anglican Communion arises historically as an accident. It has never been constituted as an ecclesial body. The paper traces the transformations in the Anglican ecclesiastical map amid powerful global undercurrents in the second half of the twentieth century. It reflects on the emergence of the status of the See of Canterbury as "focus of unity" of the Anglican Communion. It proceeds to point out how uncritical adoption of the term "instruments of unity" from Protestant ecumenical dialogues led to confusion and mistrust among Anglican Churches. The paper then explores the potentials of communion-ecclesiology for the Anglican Covenant. It goes on to argue that the Anglican Covenant, grounded in the New Covenant, provides the canonical structure of the Anglican Communion. It constitutes the particular Churches to be a confident Communion of Churches. The inter-Anglican structures of the Anglican Communion should in fact be the ecclesiastical embodiment of the Anglican Covenant.
The Covenant will be the focus of this gathering in Singapore. VOL will be there to report on it all for you. There will be large delegation of Global South primates, bishops and theologians. It will be a very exciting occasion.
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A report from the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada has the Rev. Katherine Grieb of Virginia Theological Seminary, a member of the original Anglican Covenant Design Team, saying this: "No provinces have yet ratified this Covenant. From TEC's perspective the document has progressed from being very rough to being a draft 'that they could live with.' "
That's odd, how can she confirm such conclusions when only General Convention can ratify them? Mrs. Jefferts Schori shot down any talk of a Covenant till 2012 and Executive Council hasn't said anything either. Section IV, the disciplinary section of the covenant, has been referred to the Standing Commission on Constitution and Canons to determine whether it conflicts with the governing documents of TEC. Furthermore, those persons who will consider the document at the 2012 General Convention haven't even been elected yet.
Well, VOL asked the question at a HOB press conference and Mrs. Jefferts Schori answered saying that Grieb was misinterpreted. "What she said was her opinion and not the mind of the Episcopal Church," said the PB.
At the Camp Allen, Texas meeting of the HOB this week, Kansas Bishop Dean Wolfe described the meeting as "robust" when the bishops talked about The Emergent Church, the struggle in Haiti and the attempted assassination o the Bishop of El Salvador bishop. They also elected two new bishops. There was also a report from Title IV Review Committee but nobody asked what exactly they concluded.
However when one reporter asked if there had been any reaction to the Archbishop of Canterbury's comment that he was disappointed in the election of a lesbian to be the next Suffragan Bishop of Los Angeles, Jefferts Schori gave a resounding "no". It was not discussed in open forum or around tables or in groups. It was not part of the agenda, said the Presiding Bishop.
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SEWANEE: For the third year in a row, there will be a full Lesbian, Gay, Transgendered, Bisexual sodom festival scheduled for the Mountain. Today through Thursday will be a good time to pack up the kids and flee the local Sewanee Gomorrah for safer havens in the valley, writes the Ladies Auxiliary of the Mountain Assemblymen in Sewanee, Tennessee. A bulletin reports this: "Hard to argue with the new name "Sewanee: The National Gay Episcopal University" that appears in Virtueonline's news coverage of the Episcopal Church and its Episcopal University here in Sewanee."
Did the greedy fundraisers in the Development Office send invitations to the conservative Christian alumni and donors? Did the Admissions Office send invitations to all prospectives, including the heteronormative ones? The Annual Conference on Human Equality will be held March 22-25 http://news.sewanee.edu/events/2010/03/22/annual-conference-on-human-equality-march-22-25.537
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This is an update on the situation in the Diocese of the Southwest Florida from a VOL reader in that diocese regarding the diversion of funds requested by orthodox Episcopalians who wanted their monies not to go to TEC but to the Dominican Republic. The VOL reader writes: "Blowing the whistle is never an easy thing to do. You can get vilified for it. VOL told the story of how Bishop Dabney Smith inadvertently forgot to send monies to the Dominican Republic and sent them to TEC instead. Last Saturday's Diocesan Council meeting did not resolve anything. Except, suddenly that Bishop Smith decided to come clean on his true feelings. He now claims he does not support the practice of our 'green cards diverting funds from TEC'. He is not in favor of diverting funds from TEC in spite of what he told many people to their faces. At the meeting he spoke clearly on the issue. He now claims he has no authority to do it pastorally either. He has appointed a six-man committee to study the problem and submit a "white paper" recommendation to the Diocesan Council at the May meeting for Council's vote. They have thrown out several thousand dollars from the total to be withheld from TEC because St. Luke's in Ft. Myers and Holy Spirit in Osprey Fl. used a vestry vote instead of individual green cards. This reduces the 2009 to be diverted amount down to $19,000. The meeting had three observers from Redeemer and two observers from Christ Church. Ed Webber from Redeemer was allowed to speak for about three minutes and asked council to give the Bishop the authority to pastorally get this done. That's how we stand."
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This is what is increasingly happening in England. It is a vignette of homosexual political correctness and it is disturbing and alarming. It is conceivable this could come in time to the United States. A homosexual couple was turned away from a B&B by its Christian owners who claimed it was against their convictions for two men to share a bed. Michael Black and John Morgan from Brampton, Cambridgeshire, booked a double room at the B&B in Cookham, Berkshire, for Friday night. When they arrived, Susanne Wilkinson and her husband Francis refused to allow them to stay. The owner said later that she had turned them away because it was against her policy to accommodate same sex couples. They reported the matter to Thames Valley police and have given a statement.
Mrs. Wilkinson said: "I don't see why I should change my mind and my beliefs I've held for years just because the government should force it on me. The property is not a hotel. It operates as a guest house and private home. We are Christians and we believe our rights don't have to be subordinated. We have religious freedom and we are not judging that but we are not prepared to have that sort of activity under our roof," he said. "These people are very organized and we have already been inundated with abusive calls and emails. It is really sad that people act like that."
Thames Valley police said: "We are aware of the incident ... The call has been logged as a homophobic incident. As the people live outside of the force area, we have asked Cambridgeshire constabulary to speak to the individuals concerned."
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Are there some positive changes going on in the Church of England? Bishop John Gladwin, lately of Chelmsford Diocese, patron of Changing Attitude, the openly gay CofE organization, is to be replaced by an Anglo-Catholic bishop, Bishop Stephen Cottrell (presently suffragan bishop of Reading) who has signified that he will hold to the orthodox line on human sexuality. He is also orthodox about the central Christological issues, and is expected to vote for proper provision for conservatives in the Church of England who do not accept women bishops. Not perfect but compared to his predecessor, an angel of light. There is also a new Bishop of Peterborough the Rt. Rev. Donald Allister. He will be consecrated today, VOL was told. He is an evangelical and is firmly orthodox on all moral issues and believes in saving souls, which puts him in a tiny minority among CofE bishops. You are now permitted to say "Praise the Lord."
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This information regarding SAMS and CMS is an update and partial correction on what I wrote last week. Oxford-based Bishop Henry Scriven wrote to VOL to say that on Feb 1st, 2010, SAMS and CMS in Great Britain together formed a new legal entity (both company and registered charity) called CMS. It still stands for Church Mission Society, but it is a new entity as the old CMS was not a company; it was only a charity whereas SAMS-GB was both. The new entity is based in the CMS central office in Oxford. SAMS offices are being closed (there were three; two are now closed and one will close mid May). So legally this was a merger of the two historic mission agencies. To some of our SAMS supporters, we are saying our Mission Partners are "with CMS, now incorporating SAMS".
CMS has also recently been recognized as a Religious Community by the Church of England with its own Episcopal Visitor (at the moment the Bishop of Coventry). "Leading up to Easter and Pentecost, we are asking all supporters and members to go through a discernment process leading to signing up as members of the new Community (and the company). The name we are increasingly using (instead of Church Mission Society) is Community of Mission Service. You can get a lot more information from the website: http://www.cms-uk.org/ Email: Henry.Scriven@cms-uk.org Church Mission Society, Watlington Road, Oxford OX4 6BZ SAMS-USA is still SAMS-USA. "
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From a VOL reader in Eastern Michigan comes this sad footnote to a dying parish: "Our little splinter church in Christ the King, Croswell Lexington has folded. We struggled to maintain a regular worship site and could no longer afford to pay a Priest to come from afar...our 'Bishop' didn't seem to care too much WHAT happened to us and our supply priest was more interested in making us liturgical Baptists than preserving any continuing Orthodoxy... Goodbye to schizophrenic Anglicanism and a Happy HELLO to Roman Catholicism...Thank God, we are home at last."
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From yet another Episcopalian comes this: "My congregation has been St. Mary's in Stuart, Florida. Our orthodox rector retired a year ago and it has been downhill since then. A few months ago, our Diocesan website advertised lectures by John Shelby Spong at a church in S. Florida (United Church of Christ). They would never give space to a conservative evangelical. This and the Glasspool election is probably about it for me as we are transitioning to an Anglican Mission in America church."
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Episcopalians Are Becoming Indistinguishable from the Culture. At the statistical blog Floating Sheep, they have been conducting a very interesting analysis using the relative frequency of certain terms used on Google search engines around the world. For example, they took the four terms "Jesus", "Allah", "Buddha" and "Hindu", and plotted the relative frequency with which those four terms showed up in searches from any one particular location. Where one term was more prominent than the other three, they placed a colored dot for that term at that point on a world map. (You can read more about their analysis technique here http://www.floatingsheep.org/2010/01/googles-geographies-of-religion.html The result was a map that looked like this (click to enlarge): http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_lMUFLFC2QTg/S6Zmmi4yCsI/AAAAAAAAAIc/usOa6QMmbhA/s1600-h/worldreligion.jpg Source: Curmudgeon
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A March 2010 opinion survey conducted by professional polling organization ICM Research shows that the population of the UK is equally split over the importance of institutional religion in public life, but three-quarters of the public and 70 per cent of Christians believe it is wrong for bishops to have reserved places in the House of Lords.
The population of the UK is equally split over the importance of institutional religion in public life, but three-quarters of the public and 70 per cent of Christians believe it is wrong for bishops to have reserved places in the House of Lords.
The findings come in an ICM poll commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, as part of the Power 2010 initiative for reform of the second chamber in parliament, of which the religion and society think-tank Ekklesia is a member.
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The Rev. Dr. James "Jay" Magness was elected Sixth Bishop Suffragan for Federal Ministries on the second ballot on March 24, pending successful completion of the consent process. Magness serves as the Cannon for Mission and Diocesan Administration in the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Virginia.
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JOB OPENING. The Church of the Good Samaritan in Paoli, Pennsylvania, is seeking a senior rector for its 600-active member (2,000 on the rolls) parish. This person must be a mature evangelical who can oversee a staff of 33 employees including four clergy and a budget of $1.8 million. The salary is around $80,000 a year plus medical benefits, a house on the campus and other related expenses. There are good schools in the area. We have four Sunday services and multiple services throughout the year, including a vigorous musical program and Bible Study classes led by men like Dr. Chris Hall, Dean of Eastern University and others from that campus. Good Sam, as it is affectionately known, is in the Diocese of Pennsylvania, which has an interim bishop (Rodney Michel) till a bishop is elected three years from now. (Bishop Charles Bennison has been sentenced to be deposed). The parish shows no interest in leaving the diocese or TEC. The parish recently completed a $12 million building campaign. This is a plum evangelical parish, liturgically strong, active in outreach parish and one of the most vibrant in the US Northeast.
If you think you might be the person God is calling, please write to: goodsamdcinfo@gmail.com You can also submit your resume directly to: hsconnett@hotmail.com A Parish Profile can be found here: www.good-samaritan.org
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I am taking a few days off with my wife so this digest is coming to you two days early. Stories will continue to be posted to the website. www.virtueonline.org
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In the next day or so you will be receiving our three times a year appeal for donations to keep this ministry coming to you. I hope you will take a moment to sit down and write out a check to support VOL. We need funds to travel to being you the latest news from the Anglican Communion and to pay staff who support this vital ministry.
You can send a check to:
VIRTUEONLINE
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If you would like to make a PAYPAL donation you may go to VOL's website: www.virtueonline.org and click on the PAYPAL button. Thank you for your support. VOL's website is available in 34 languages. Our Global Anglican Theological Institute is available in 40 languages. We boldly go where others will not go. So please consider a donation at this time.
In Christ,
David
