From here:
The Archbishop, who regularly speaks with contacts in Nigeria, described its Anglican Church as an ‘extraordinary powerhouse’.
Welby did not go on to point out that while Anglicanism in Nigeria is a Powerhouse, in the West it’s more of a Bathhouse: a Gay Bathhouse.
Continuing Indaba uses journeys to establish relationships and build community so that genuine conversation on matters of significance can energise mission.
I would like to congratulate the writer on cramming an unprecedented concentration of clichés into one sentence: journeys, relationships, community, conversation, significance, energise and mission are all there – although it’s a shame he missed trajectory and go deeper.
In the spirit of robust obfuscation, the sentence could be describing anything from a seniors’ knitting club on a long cruise to a morale boosting – it’s actually called “team building“ now – IBM sales meeting at an expensive golf resort.
What it actually is, is a liberal diversion aimed at lulling unwary conservatives into a conversational stupor while, behind the scenes, the real work is done: Continuing Machinations to bring to pass everything the conservatives disagree with.
For those convinced that with a new Archbishop of Canterbury things would change, the first photograph that appears on the site might be something of a disappointment:
The second holds more promise: a Canada goose. We are trying to get rid of them because they poop on everything:
As if a cardboard cathedral were not a sufficiently apt metaphor for the state of western Anglicanism, we now have the soggy cardboard cathedral; nothing to worry about, though, “it’s just cosmetic”:
Sections of an innovative New Zealand cathedral being made from cardboard have gone soggy in the rain, but the project will still be completed next month, the Anglican Church said Friday.
The structure, which has walls made from cardboard tubes, is a temporary replacement for Christchurch’s Anglican cathedral, which was destroyed in a February 2011 earthquake that killed 185 people in New Zealand’s second largest city.
[…..]
“It’s nothing to be worried about at all. The builders anticipated this would happen. It’s just cosmetic.”
St Michael’s and all Angels Anglican Church in Smethcote “sits on a hill with magnificent views”.
One of the more unusual magnificent views that the parishioners have enjoyed recently is the sight of their 65 year old priest, Rev. Caroline Wright, appearing topless on wallpaper which sells for £100 per roll. No mention is made of whether the paper is embossed.
Lest anyone rashly jump to the conclusion that the exposed reverend was motivated by mere exhibitionism, she is quick to point out that the unrobing, along with 250 other women, was in aid of the “breast awareness charity Coppafeel.” Apparently, “it was really powerful and great fun.”
In all fairness to the topless reverend, the flashing was in a good cause: raising money for breast cancer treatment. Anyone interested in ordering a few rolls can find them at boobwallpaper.com.
One can only hope that male priests don’t start getting similar ideas about “raising awareness” of testicular cancer.
From here:
A female priest has spoken of how she had no hesitation at all before stripping off and posing topless for a charity wallpaper.
Reverend Caroline Wright, an associate priest at St Michael’s Church in Smethcote, Shropshire, was among 250 women who agreed to take part in the photoshoot to raise money for breast awareness charity Coppafeel.
The 65-year-old, who conducts weddings and funerals and plays the organ at the rural 12th century church, said the topless photo shoot by local artist Sam Powley was ‘great fun’.
Reverend Wright, who is a grandmother of 12, who has been ordained for four years, said she had no hesitation in taking part in the project – but she is not revealing where she is on the wallpaper.
An interesting interview with the Presiding Bishop of the Southern Cone.
Read it all here:
On crossing borders – the local ACoC bishop is Michael Bird, incidentally:
Did you ask permission of the local Anglican Church of Canada bishop to visit here?
No, because I am coming to another, different Anglican church.
On why “reconciling” ANiC and the ACoC à la Justin Welby’s recipe won’t work – the ACoC has “another gospel…. not the biblical gospel of Jesus Christ”:
Do you or GAFCON have any plans to reconcile ACNA with the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada?
We don’t see our role in that way. The new Archbishop of Canterbury wants to work for the reconciliation of the church around the world. I don’t know how he will do it. I don’t know if TEC or the ACC will change. We will not renounce what we believe. Our understanding in GAFCON is that TEC and the ACC have another gospel; it is not the biblical gospel of Jesus Christ. If they move back to the Bible we can be in communion.
On what really sets Canterbury’s policy:
You have spoken of “the heavy machinery” or bureaucracy behind the Archbishop of Canterbury. How much does it run things?
I met the last Archbishop of Canterbury. Rowan Williams is a very nice man. But all the machinery behind him, the bureaucracy, is led by liberals; the Anglican Consultative Council is controlled by liberals; the Anglican Communion Office is controlled by liberals as well.
On the worldwide Anglican Communion of which TEC and the ACoC are not a part according to Zavala:
Don’t we really have two separate international entities now, the FCA and the more liberal rest of the Communion? And the Archbishop of Canterbury is trying to straddle them both. Do we really have a global Communion anymore?
Anglicans are one universal body. We have internal tensions. That is happening now. Maybe we will have to live forever with those tensions. We had that issue in the Southern Cone in 2003. Why not leave the Communion? We decided no, because we are true Anglicans. Instead we broke communion with the ACC and TEC.
On how Canadian church services are short:
Tell me more about the Anglican Church in Chile.
Most Chilean pastors are full-time priests but we often meet in schools. Our church services can be three or four hours long. If the sermon is less than an hour, the pastor is not considered a good preacher. People sometimes walk 1½ hours to get to church. Some services begin at 11, stop at 1 for lunch and resume from 2 until 4.
The remarkable Canon Andrew White:
He is visiting Israel at the moment.
More here:
The “Vicar of Baghdad” is visiting Israel this week, and he’s brought a little good news, a great deal of bad, and endless reserves of faith.
The Vicar of Baghdad is a larger-than-life figure — a big, exuberant presence with a cane (he suffers from multiple sclerosis), a large silver cross around his neck, and today a deafening bow tie — and he needs to be. He’s lived in the constant shadow of death for eight years in a heavily barricaded compound surrounded by razor wire in the Iraqi capital, prevented by the Iraqi Army from taking so much as a step outside, with bombs exploding all around. He is permanently surrounded by dozens of army guards. When he wants to leave — like he did just now, to come to Israel — he is driven out of the compound in an Iraqi army convoy.
The Vicar of Baghdad reopened the Iraqi capital’s St. George’s Church in 2003, along with Justin Welby, a fellow member of the Anglican clergy with whom he had worked at England’s Coventry Cathedral. Welby is a good ally to have; three weeks ago he was enthroned as the Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the Anglican church. St George’s, which was founded in 1863, was closed down by Saddam Hussein. It now has the largest congregation of any church in Iraq, at 6,500. About 600 of its regulars are Muslims.
At the meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council in New Zealand, she wanted to add a sixth: “to advance peace, eliminate violence and reconcile all.”
You can always count on a Canadian bishop to come up with something sufficiently nebulously utopian that no-one can openly disagree with it. And why would they? Everyone is secretly convinced that, being manifestly unattainable, it will make few demands, yet it will distract from the more tangible woes of the Anglican Communion; and that’s what the meeting is all about, after all. The motion was defeated, but the substance was tacked on to number four which now reads:
To seek to transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and to pursue peace and reconciliation.
Now, to paraphrase Ps 46:9, we can expect wars to cease to the ends of the earth, the bow will be broken, the spear shattered and the oceans will stop rising. Oh, hang on, that last bit has already been done.
Still, I’m very glad we are left with only five marks of mission; mainly because I think Fatuous Five has a better ring to it than Scelestious Six.
What a relief. For a moment I thought someone might have put it out of its misery, thereby preventing further conversations aimed at diverting attention away from the dire peril threatening to rend the Anglican Communion asunder.
From here:
The core values of the Continuing Indaba were defined in a paper by John Mark Oduor of Kenya He summoned the community to meet under the cross of Christ,” for the healing, reconciliation and unity of the community and the world” The core values he identified are:
· The priority of Relationship
· The need for Conversation
· The significance of A Place of Meeting
· The Appreciation of our Uniqueness within a whole community
· Forgiveness and healing
[…..]
When the time came for the ACC to vote on a proposed resolution regarding the future of Continuing Indaba, several delegates suggested further additions, including a suggestion from Bp Samson Mwalunda of Kenya, that Continuing Indaba should be a process to undergird all pan-Anglican conferences. There was another suggestion that Continuing indaba should have a commitment to the ultimate resolution of issues.
ACC Chair, Bp James Tengatenga, offered the members a motion to seek to refine the resolution, or to vote on the existing one. By a narrow margin, the ACC voted to not accept any amendments, and a majority then voted in favour of the unamended resolution.
Have you noticed that, these days, the church seldom talks about a person’s faith being settled on a set of dogma which the person has become convinced represents real objective truth? Instead, because of the church’s reluctance to make a definitive theological statement of any kind – other than that we should not make a definitive theological statement of any kind – we are all on a faith journey.
Well I’m not. I used to be an atheist; when I came to the conclusion that God almost certainly exists I changed my mind. I changed my mind again – or perhaps God changed it – when I awoke, literally one morning, with the certain knowledge that Jesus is God incarnate.
I was not on a faith journey then, I am not on one now and have absolutely no intention of going on one – ever.
