Category Archives: Anglican Angst

Testing the bonds of affection

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Anglicans are always prattling on about testing the bonds of affection. At first glance it gives the impression that, having tired of homosexuality, Anglican clergy have moved on to bondage.

Not so, apparently – well, it may be so, but no one is talking yet. Testing the bonds of affection refers to the split in the Anglican Communion; as Fred Hiltz notes:

We were invited to speak to the subject of “testing the bonds of affection” and to offer some reflections on the state of relations within and among the churches of the Anglican Communion.
While we acknowledged concerns about tensions over any number of matters and our grief over impaired relations between some churches, we noted the blessings of indaba—that manner of speaking and listening.

This clarifies things nicely: obviously, participants in Indabas and listening would have to be tied down – presumably with bonds of affection – to prevent them from running out screaming.

Elsewhere, Hiltz reveals that a select group of Manchurian Candidate African Primates have been persuaded (perhaps they were threatened with bonds of affection) to adopt Western eco-worship and sustainability. One can hardly blame them for caving: imagine the torment of sustained Indabas.

They framed their conversation in the context of human dignity, the sustainability of ministry and the care for the earth, and discussed a wide range of subjects that provide opportunities for fruitful collaboration and sharing of one another’s gifts.

Anglicanism in 2010

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Once upon a time there was a family living in a house in the Province of Manglia. It was a clean house with clean children who drank clean water from the well owned by the landlord. The landlord maintained the well, following carefully the instructions in the big black Well Manual.

For many years the family lived happily and got on wonderfully with the landlord.

One day, when the well was due for its scheduled maintenance, the landlord (who, to tell the truth, was bored with the same old maintenance routine), decided to try something different, something that the Well Manual said Really Shouldn’t Be Done: he tossed a dead sheep down the well.

Before long, the family noticed that their once clean water didn’t taste quite right; they complained to the landlord, but he told them that the water just had one of many diverse flavours that they would eventually get used to. He pointed out that nobody likes change at first.

The family wasn’t happy, but the neighbouring Province of Ganglia generously routed some of the water from their clean well to the family. Now as everyone knows, strictly speaking, unauthorised pipelines across other landlords’ Provinces are Bad Manners, so although the family was happy, the landlord of Manglia was furious that the landlord of Ganglia had had the effrontery to question his prophetic, pastoral well-management innovations and ship in foreign water.

So the family and the landlord of Manglia both appealed to the Landlord of all the Provinces – known collectively as Tanglia because they are in a bit of a mess just like the Landlord’s eyebrows – who told the landlord of Manglia to fish the dead sheep out of the well and the landlord of Ganglia to stop interfering and keep his clean water to himself.

The landlord of Manglia responded by throwing another dead sheep down the well; by now he had captured the attention of other landlords who were beginning to think he was on to something. The landlord of Ganglia told the family, “don’t worry, plenty of clean water to go around – even if it is Bad Manners to say so”, upon which the landlord of Manglia decided to evict the family from their house so he could sell it to someone who likes water that smells of dead sheep.

The Landlord was furious and in private stamped his feet and gnashed his teeth; he wanted to throw both landlords down a well.

Of course, being the Landlord, he was obliged to maintain an air of decorum. To punish both landlords he told them that neither was invited to any more parties thrown by the Landlord, nor would they receive the Landlord’s traditional Christmas gift of lava bread made personally by the Landlord from oven-dried Swansea seaweed. That should sort them out, thought the Landlord, rubbing his hands in glee.

Or, to put it another way:

Dr Rowan Williams announced that provinces which had ignored his “pleading” for restraint would be banned from attending official discussions with other Christian denominations and prevented from voting on a key body on doctrine.

He admitted the 80 million-strong Anglican Communion was in a time of “substantial transition” but held back from taking the most serious step of expelling national churches from it.

His action, taken after years of patiently asking both conservatives and liberals to abide by agreed rules, will affect both sides in the dispute over whether the Bible permits openly homosexual clergy.

It has been triggered by the progressive Episcopal Church of the USA, which ordained its first lesbian bishop, the Rt Rev Mary Glasspool, earlier this month. The Episcopal Church also elected the first openly homosexual bishop in the Communion, the Rt Rev Gene Robinson, in 2003.

But the move will also hit orthodox provinces in the developing world – known as the Global South – that reacted to the liberal innovations in America and Canada by taking conservative American clergy and congregations out of their national churches and giving them roles in Africa and South America. This has triggered bitter legal battles over the fate of church buildings.

Anglican Earth Day Daftness

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It must be a comfort to Roman Catholic priests to know that if their theology becomes so outré that they are ejected from the Catholic Church, there will still be a home for them in Anglicanism. Mathew Fox, an ex Roman Catholic, is an Anglican priest in TEC where he feels quite at home; he pioneered the Techno Cosmic Mass:

An Episcopal priest and theologian who popularized the rave-like “Techno Cosmic Mass” and advocated goddess worship recently led a seminar on mysticism and Earth spirituality to coincide with Earth Day.

Warning that environmental degradation caused by raging against “Gaia” had to cease, the Rev. Matthew Fox made frequent references to “the Goddess” and the divine feminine during his environmentally-themed lecture and workshop, “Earth Spirituality and the Mystical Tradition.” The event was held in April at the Unitarian Universalist Church in the Washington suburb of Rockville, Maryland, and sponsored by the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation.

Fox’s seminar was a melding of Celtic spirituality, goddess worship, panentheism (which posits that God interpenetrates every part of nature, but also transcends nature), environmental activism, and a political rejection of American “empire,” peppered sporadically with digs against the Vatican. Making references to Christian mystics like Hildegard of Bingen alongside pagan deities and the animal world, Fox comfortably oscillated between threats to polar bears and the oppression patriarchy when expressing his views on the natural world.

Having children is equivalent to stealing says the Anglican Church

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The Anglican Church in Australia has decided that having children is bad for the environment, breaks the eighth commandment and is the equivalent of stealing.

Thus the Anglican Church soldiers on in its never-flagging efforts to devolve into an obscure, laughable and deranged eco-cult.

The Anglican Church wants Australians to have fewer children and has urged the federal government to scrap the baby bonus and cut immigration levels.

The General Synod of the Anglican Church has issued a warning that current rates of population growth are unsustainable and potentially out of step with church doctrine – including the eighth commandment ”thou shall not steal”.

In a significant intervention, the Anglican Public Affairs Commission has also warned concerned Christians that remaining silent ”is little different from supporting further overpopulation and ecological degradation”.

”Out of care for the whole Creation, particularly the poorest of humanity and the life forms who cannot speak for themselves … it is not responsible to stand by and remain silent,” a discussion paper by the commission warns.

”Unless we take account of the needs of future life on Earth, there is a case that we break the eighth commandment – ‘Thou shall not steal’.”

The discussion paper, prepared in March, claims that federal government financial incentives encouraging childbirth should be scrapped and replaced with improved support for parents, such as leave.

300 Anglican clergy in the UK doubt God’s existence

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And that was in 2005.

A report produced 5 years ago by the University of Bangor found that 300 clergymen in the Church of England doubt that God exists. That makes about as much sense as a carpenter disbelieving in the existence of trees; you might think that 300 out of 9000 isn’t bad – unless you happen to be in one of atheist-priest’s parishes, of course. The CofE fares much worse when it comes to Christian beliefs, with 1800 clergy disbelieving in the bodily resurrection of Christ and 3600 disbelieving in the Virgin Birth. That means, in 2005, at least 3600 CofE clergymen routinely and publically lied every Sunday when reciting the creed.

For those who think the current trials afflicting the Anglican church are about nothing but sex, these figures should serve as a salutary reminder that a disturbingly large number of Anglican priests in the UK do not believe in what they are peddling.

Things are far worse in Canada, of course: the Anglican Church of Canada makes the Church of England look like a hotbed of fundamentalism.

The report, published on the eve of the General Synod, refers to “very fragile faultlines along which the Church of England could be torn apart”. Congregations are much more conservative than most of the comparatively liberal clergy preaching to them.

The report says that if committed Anglicans are clear about one thing it is the existence of God: 97 per cent have no hesitation in affirming His existence. Yet, it continues, one in 33 clerics doubts the existence of God. If reflected throughout the Church’s 9,000 clergy the finding would mean that nearly 300 Church of England clergy are uncertain that God exists.

Equal numbers of clergy and laity, eight out of ten, believe in the bodily resurrection of Christ but more laity than clergy believe in the Virgin Birth — 62 per cent compared with 60 per cent — and in the miracle where Jesus turned water into wine — 65 per cent compared with 61 per cent. The biggest division comes over the issue of homosexuality. One third of clergy are in favour of the ordination of practising homosexuals as priests, compared with one quarter of laity. Nearly one third of clergy also support the ordination of gay bishops, but among the laity this falls to fewer than one fifth

For a Lent study, a Quebec Anglican Church invites imam to speak about Islam

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Just what every Anglican needs to meditate on during Lent: the basics of Islam:

Also, on three Tuesday evenings at 7:30, beginning Feb. 23, we welcome Dr. Ahmad Shafaat, the imam of the local mosque, who will teach us some basics about Islam. He will bring several members of his congregation to join us in conversation. Take the time for what interests you; everyone is welcome.

The series was called, “Understanding Islam” and:

Dr. Shafaat’s lectures dealt with the life of the prophet, the roots of Islam, and the prayer recited by the faithful five times daily. It begins, “In the Name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful, Master of the Day of Recompense.” Everything we have comes from God, Dr. Shafaat said, and our relationship to Creation is based on respect. The nature of God is indescribable but unmistakable, a transcendental reality.

As Anglicans we do need to remember, particularly during Lent, that Jesus died on the cross to help us understand Islam better.

A gathering of demented Anglican women

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In New York:

Thousands of women from around the world, including more than 90 representing the Anglican Communion, will gather in New York March 1-12 for the 54th session of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women to undertake a 15-year review of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.

It takes a special blindness for women to rally under the banner of a city whose country is bent on their extermination. Naturally, Anglican women will be there in full force.

On the garbage dumps that surround Beijing, scavengers from time to time will find a newborn baby girl amid the stinking refuge.

Sometimes she is still alive.

Every year, say researchers, perhaps a million girl foetuses are aborted and tens of thousands of girl babies are abandoned.

Bridging divisions the Anglican way

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John Chapman, Bishop of Ottawa is going to quell the strife in his church by training his priests:

The Anglican Church in Canada is updating how it trains priests so they can minister to everyone from Bay Street stockbrokers to Baffin Island Inuit.

Up until now priests have only been trained to seek out and hunt down candidates for same-sex unions; now that demographic has been exhausted, they are going after stockbrokers.

Ottawa Bishop John Chapman, who is leading the initiative, believes a savvier clergy would help bridge the church’s current bitter divisions over issues such as gay priests.

I can’t think why no-one has come up with this before. If only the clergy were more “savvy” we’d all start agreeing with same-sex blessings. It’s so obvious.

“The genius of the Anglican Church has been its capacity to live in difference,” Chapman said in an interview.

Or, as is now the case, disintegrate in difference.

As much as the church is badly divided these days, at least people care, “and that’s not what I remember as a child. I don’t remember people working up that kind of energy about anything. It was still the club; it was the social life. You found yourself there every Sunday and you weren’t even sure why some times.

Now, at least, people know why they do not belong to the Anglican Church of Canada

“I can’t imagine my childhood church getting worked about human sexuality,” said Chapman. “These are one of the most exciting times; there is a passion for faith.”

It’s true, of course: the creeping heresy of the ACoC has created passion among Anglican Christians; so much passion that a new Anglican province has been formed. Thanks for the nudge, John.

But pastors need new skills in calming congregations at war over sexuality or steering communities through traumatic change like closing a church. “There is quite a variety of need … that has exploded in last 25 years and we have not, in terms of a common standard … kept pace with that.”

It’s hard to keep pace with dealing with the havoc you have created when you are expending so much energy in creating more, John.

In order to calm congregations, training in doping incense with teargas, crippling but non-lethal wielding of thuribles and the use of taser tipped bishops crooks has begun.

Those working with immigrants, in urban areas, or remote First Nations communities, all need unique skills if they are to keep the church vibrant.

“The Anglican Church is not … white Anglo-Saxon,” says Chapman.

“It’s very much a global church, represented in this country.”

The global Anglican church is the one thing that bishops like Chapman are ignoring; every request from the bulk of the Anglican Communion to stop same sex blessings and homosexual ordinations has only served to create perversely contorted justifications for continuing to do what it has been asked not to do. Chapman himself coined the phrase “experiential discernment” to explain why he was continuing to do what he ought not to; I understand that the Ottawa branch of the Hell’s Angels now tattoos that on every member’s arm as part of his initiation.

Recommendations will go to the national church’s faith, worship and ministry committee, which will develop a proposal for common standards. Chapman is hoping that Primate George Hiltz, head of the Anglican Church in Canada, will create a commission to address the problems.

“create a commission to address the problems” . In other words, nothing will be done.

Where does a priest who doesn't believe in God get invited to preach?

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In an Anglican church, of course; but I expect you already knew that:

DON’T call me Father, says Peter Kennedy.

And it soon becomes clear why the man, who was a serving priest for 45 years before the Catholic Church evicted him from his parish in Brisbane, no longer wants the title.

He doesn’t believe in the priesthood anymore, nor the virgin birth, nor the infallibility of the Pope. In fact, he doubts that Jesus ever existed and although he is the spiritual leader of a 500-strong Christian community, he says he no longer prays because there’s “no one to pray to.”

The controversial and charismatic ex-priest, who made headlines last year when he refused to leave St Mary’s as instructed by his Bishop, will preach tomorrow at All Saints’ Anglican Church in Simpson Street, North Rockhampton.

Welcome home unFather Peter.

Dr. Mouneer Anis demonstrates integrity

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From here:

The President Bishop of the Province of Jerusalem and the Middle East has quit the Standing Committee of the Anglican Consultative Council, stating he has no faith in its integrity.

In a withering critique released on Jan 30, the Bishop of Egypt Dr. Mouneer Anis said that after having served for three years on the Standing Committee he had come to the belief that his continued presence had “no value whatsoever and my voice is like a useless cry in the wilderness.”

The Bishop of Egypt’s defection comes as a blow to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, who had counted on Dr. Anis as one of his few remaining allies among the global south coalition of primates.

Dr. Williams had attempted to dissuade Dr. Anis from quitting the standing committee after Dr. Anis gave voice to his concerns following its December meeting. He pleaded with Dr. Anis to stand fast, sources close to the Egyptian bishop told The Church of England Newspaper, arguing the Anglican Covenant would soon answer his concerns.

However, Dr. Anis’ Jan 30 letter branding the processes and structures Dr. Williams set in place as flawed, comes as a public rebuke to the archbishop, which further isolates Canterbury from the non-Western primates of the Communion.

Thank you Dr. Mouneer Anis.

Undoubtedly, the reason Rowan Williams wanted Anis to stay was in order to further the illusion of harmony between conservatives and liberals; Anis would have been the token conservative.

A salutary lesson to conservatives who have chosen to remain in the ACoC and TEC: you are being used.