"We are deeply, tragically, horribly stuck, not only the Episcopal Church but the Anglican Communion as a whole." -- The Rt. Rev. John W. Howe of Central Florida

BREAKING NEWS: New ecclesiastical structure announced by orthodox bishops. http://tinyurl.com/34z93s

David W. Virtue in Pittsburgh, PA

Dear Brothers and Sisters,
www.virtueonline.org
9/28/2007

The verbal sweeteners that the Episcopal Church House of Bishops tossed to the Anglican Communion, this week in New Orleans in order to remain in the Communion, will not be enough to keep the Anglican Communion together. The fabric of the communion has been irrevocably torn.

The bishops acknowledged that non-celibate gay and lesbian persons are included among those "to whom B033 pertains" may be read as a significant change or clarification to B033, but it is not. It is a worthless "sequitur" statement that doesn't add anything. After all, we know that B033 pertains to anyone, including "non-celibate gay and lesbian persons."

It also does not affect the intent of B033 which avoids responding to the specific Windsor language of regret/repentance or Dar es salem's request for clarification in this regard. B033 should have been reworded to address specifically what caused the tear in the first place and make specific mention that they will not consecrate such persons, again. We all know that this is not possible from the Episcopal Church's HOB. Nothing changes in this direction. What has been consistently coming across is "Yes, we know it is very painful for you. It is also for us. But we cannot and will not change."

In a nutshell, that is what happened in New Orleans. The call to "sacrificial action" by the HOB over their approach to homosexuality, in order to remain fully part of the Anglican Communion, will not fly. That is already being expressed around the globe. You can read responses to this from Nigeria, Kenya, Australia, the Global South and many more in today's digest.

The threat of schism in the Anglican Communion still looms large and will not go away even if Mrs. Schori would like it that way. The consecration of Bishop Gene Robinson and the performing of same-sex blessings remain the sticking points. The authority of Holy Scripture remains the deep and abiding issue that will not disappear. Ancillary issues like Women's Ordination, and oversight for disaffected priests and dioceses will not even be considered by the HOB, unless it is on the Episcopal Church's terms.

Within hours of the NOLA resolution from the HOB, Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola rejected the Episcopal Church's latest efforts to calm tensions over the consecration of gay bishops saying that they failed to explicitly bar gay bishops from the pulpit meant his followers' "pleas have once again been ignored."

"Instead of the change of heart (repentance) that we sought, what we have been offered is merely a temporary adjustment," Akinola said in a statement posted on his church's website.

The Primate of Kenya, Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi, said, "What we expected to come from them is to repent - that this is a sin in the eyes of the Lord and repentance is what me, in particular, and others expected to hear coming from this church."

The Assistant Bishop of Kampala, Ugandan David Zac Niringiye, said it was "not a change of heart" and showed the church was already split.

"What this situation has brought to the fore is the malaise - something much deeper - that the entire communion has not dealt with and the consecration of Bishop Gene really brought to the surface something that was there."

The Rev. David Phillips, General Secretary of Church Society, said that this is likely to mean is that the whole unseemly mess continues without resolution. Moreover, The Archbishop of Canterbury and the majority of the Primates' Standing Committee are in agreement with the US revisionists, so they are going to play along with the charade and interpret the words as favorably as possible.

The soon to be announced newly formed Anglican Province in America will begin the serious work of snatching Episcopalians who still believe in anything out of the revisionist fires of The Episcopal Church. It will be a long protracted battle, but the orthodox will win.

They will win because they have the gospel squarely on their side. They have younger and growing congregations, while TEC, with over 7,000 parishes, has aging priests, aging parishioners and double digit congregations. It will be a long protracted battle, however.

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As a sign of the church's dysfunction, one of the official hymns of the "Community of Bishops" (as it is now called) is this one:

Mothering God

Mothering God, you gave me birth In the bright morning of this world. Creator, source of every breath, You are my rain, my wind, my sun.

Mothering Christ, you took my form, Offering me your food of light, Grain of life, and grape of love, Your very body for my peace.

Mothering Spirit, nurturing one, In arms of patience hold me close, So that in faith I root and grow Until I flower, until I know.

Here's another one (to be sung at the Eucharist, no less):

All creatures of the our God, sing praise, With thankful hearts your voices raise O sing praises! Alleluia! O Brother Sun with golden beam, O Sister Moon with silver gleam!

Dear Mother Earth, who day by day Unfolds our blessings on our way O sing praises! Alleluia! The flow'rs and fruit that in you grow, Let them God's glory also show!

The long and short of it is that the Anglican Communion is slowly crumbling. It would seem to this writer that strong leaders from Nigeria, Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, West Africa, Central Africa will break free and take others with them including the Southern Cone, Asia and some dioceses in Australia. Central Africa will break into three; Botswana will join Southern Africa. However, they recently elected a new conservative archbishop so that might not be a win-win for the liberal Bishop Trevor Mwamba. What is going to be tricky is how the Old Anglican Communion and the New Anglican Communion will find a way to differentiate themselves from each other.

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As reported earlier, the Rt. Rev. Jeffrey Steenson, Bishop of the DIOCESE OF THE RIO GRANDE, an Oxford educated person and one of only two sitting bishops in the HOB with an earned doctorate (the other is the Bishop of Bethlehem Paul Marshall) has resigned from the Episcopal Church and is going to Rome. The Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Church in Santa Fe will receive him, he told VOL.

In a prepared statement read to the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops, Steenson said that it was "painful to lay down this ministry, but I realize that an effective leader cannot be so conflicted about the guiding principles of the Church one serves." You can his full statement in today's digest. Prayer Book leader Dr. Peter Toon had this to say of his friend, "Jeffrey is an honest and good man and he is now about to do what his friends--and I count myself one -- have been expecting, making the journey across the Tiber into the Roman Catholic Church. Rightly he seeks to put into good order what he leaves behind. It has been my privilege to know him since he became an Anglican and then attended Christ Church, Oxford."

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In the DIOCESE OF LOS ANGELES, All Saints', Pasadena rector, the Rev. Ed Bacon, demanded an apology and a clarification from the Internal Revenue Service after being notified that the agency had closed a lengthy investigation of the church over a 2004 antiwar sermon, but had also found that the same sermon constituted illegal intervention in a political campaign. Recently, he told congregants, during morning services, that he and other officials were relieved that the church no longer faced the imminent loss of its tax-exempt status, but were bewildered by the IRS' seemingly contradictory conclusions about the case. Bacon said the unclear outcome could mean future investigations of the church.

All Saints, one of Southern California's largest and most liberal congregations, came under IRS scrutiny after a sermon two days before the 2004 presidential election by a guest speaker, the Rev. George F. Regas. In the sermon, Regas, the church's former rector, depicted Jesus in a mock political debate with then-presidential candidates George W. Bush and John F. Kerry. Regas did not instruct parishioners whom to support in the presidential race, but his suggestion that Jesus would have told Bush that his preemptive war strategy in Iraq "has led to disaster" prompted a letter from the IRS in June 2005 stating that the church's tax-exempt status was in question. Federal law prohibits tax-exempt organizations, including churches, from intervening in political campaigns and elections.

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Despite denial by Los Angeles Bishop J. Jon Bruno in New Orleans that he knew nothing about it, two men "celebrated their union" at All Saints' Beverly Hills, California recently. The Rev. Gabriel Ferrer led the commitment ceremony. The Rev. Maryetta Anschutz, also an Episcopal priest, participated. We will see if the bishop disciplines them according to the canons. The bishop repeatedly said the HOB has never authorized same-sex blessings, but clearly they are going on. Wink, wink, nod, nod.

*****

The DIOCESE OF CHICAGO now has 8 finalist nominees (it was five) who now want the job. This dilutes the possibility of Tracey Lind of Cleveland, a lesbian from getting it. If she does, Mrs. Schori and the HOB will have to refuse her consents, if they are going to be consistent with what they voted in New Orleans this week. The three new nominees are Rev. Alvin Johnson Jr., rector of St. Michael's Episcopal Church in Barrington; Rev. Canon Robert Koomson, a native of Ghana and pastor-in-residence at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in Evanston; and Rev. Petero Sabune, a native of Uganda who serves as chaplain of Ossining Correctional Facility and as associate rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in Ossining, N.Y.

*****

At the HOB meeting this week, Montana Bishop Charles I. "Ci" Jones got his five-year suspension lifted. He is now restored to being a bishop, but may not attend the HOB. A Court of Review in May reaffirmed that the former Montana bishop was guilty of immorality and conduct unbecoming a member of the clergy because of a sexual relationship with a parishioner which ended prior to his election as bishop. It is ironic that at lest two bishops, Gene Robinson and Otis Charles have been married, divorced and, taken up with homosexual lovers. They are given a pass for adultery and homosexual fornication while Ci goes for psychiatric evaluation and gets tossed out of the HOB for five years! It was also announced that Bishops Dan Herzog and Clarence Pope had renounced their orders and gone to Rome.

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In CHICAGO this week, Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola told some 2,000 evangelical and charismatic Anglicans, gathered in Wheaton College's Edman Memorial Chapel for the Midwest Anglican Awakening, that "Whoever loves God will obey God. Whoever knows God will do what God wants." Preaching at the annual gathering of Anglican Mission in the Americas (AMiA) congregations in the Midwest, Akinola spoke of the life-changing power of the gospel, and an uncompromising stance on sin and redemption.

Unity with God comes through the transformative power of the gospel and not through our personal agendas, said Akinola. To be transformed by the gospel requires total obedience and rejection of sinful actions, he said, whether these be "little lies, blackmailing, gossip" or "committing fornication" and engaging in adultery. There is no room for ambiguity, he maintained.

"If you do it, you go to hell unless you repent," warned Akinola, prompting a scattering of applause. Throughout his 15-minute sermon, Akinola kept to his message of spiritual transformation through biblical conformity, and avoided any explicit reference to the tensions in the Anglican Communion and the actions of the Episcopal Church. He did not acknowledge gay and lesbian advocates protesting his appearance outside the chapel.

The assembly included young families and middle-aged couples from 20 Anglican-oriented congregations in the Chicago area, Wisconsin, Indiana and Minnesota. The assembly was mainly white, but included members of several African Anglican and Latino congregations.

Two-dozen members of gay-advocacy groups, including the Gay Liberation Network of Chicago, gathered for a demonstration on the sidewalk outside Edman Chapel during the service. Waving a rainbow flag for gay liberation and the green and white Nigerian flag, the protestors called for solidarity with Nigerian gays and lesbians.

The AMiA describes itself as "a missionary movement of Rwanda committed to reaching the unchurched in North America."

*****

SOUTHERN AFRICA ELECTS CONSERVATIVE PRIMATE. The one liberal hold out in Africa will get a new Primate who is orthodox, VOL has learned. The Rt. Rev. Thabo Cecil Makgoba, Bishop of Grahamstown, was elected Archbishop of Cape Town and Metropolitan and Primate of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa on Sept. 25. Bishop Makgoba, 47, will succeed the Most Rev. Njongonkulu Ndungane as archbishop, and will assume office on Jan 1. He is viewed as a conservative on sexual issues and is expected to try to move the South African church closer to the other African Anglican provinces. The spiritual reconstruction of the church and of South African society will guide his tenure as archbishop, he told the South African Broadcasting Corporation. The Cape Town electoral assembly elected Bishop Makgoba on the second ballet. His name will now be submitted to the province's House of Bishops for confirmation.

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FROM THE SLIME TO THE RIDICULOUS. Stephen Bates the pro-gay religious affairs writer for the liberal Guardian newspaper is exiting the religion beat. He says that writing about the Anglican Communion's concern with sodomy "has been too corrosive of what faith I had left: indeed watching the way the gay row has played out in the Anglican Communion has cost me my belief in the essential benignity of too many Christians. For the good of my soul, I need to do something else." Ironically he has an evangelical wife, and he himself was raised Roman Catholic.

He has swiped at this reporter over the years, but Bates reserved his big guns in repeated efforts to besmirch Dr. Rowan Williams. If Bates' faith is so thin as to lose it over sodomy, it doesn't say much for what he started with in the first place. According to Andrew Carey of CEN, Bates had "an attitude of barely-concealed loathing towards the vast majority of evangelicals". Ironically, the person succeeding him as religious affairs correspondent is Riazat Butt, a Muslim, who will probably be just as ignorant about Anglicanism as Bates is about historic Christianity.

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In the DIOCESE OF INDIANA, this past week the local TEC bishop officially deposed the Rev Tom Tirman, now of St. Michael the Archangel Anglican under Bishop Frank Lyons of Bolivia. Undeterred, Bishop Lyons will ordain two deacons this Saturday to help serve three new missions set up since January, with one more on the way before year's end, wrote Tirman to VOL. Lyons will do this on Saturday Sept 29th, just 12 blocks from the Episcopal Cathedral! Truly God is not mocked.

*****

THE LATEST FIGURES on growth and Development in the Episcopal Church make for interesting reading.

Here are the following estimates in summary. From 2005 to 2006 the church lost 11,000 members, based on 2005 domestic ASA of 787,000. That's 1.4% down for the year. In 2002 domestic ASA was 847,000, so that's 8% less attendance since the Robinson consecration, or 76,000 fewer people attending the Episcopal Church every week, and the decline is continuing. Most dioceses are still declining with only 2 or 3 growing. The ones that are growing are experiencing only very modest growth. The 2006 Average Sunday Attendance (ASA) graphs are now available online: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/growth_60791_ENG_HTM.htm?menupage=50929

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK: The Church of England is becoming a hobby for grannies.

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Because of the volume of stories this week I am posting the digest in two parts. The first part you will get today (Friday) and the second will go out on Sunday. Thank you for your patience.

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All Blessings,

David W. Virtue DD