I’m not sure what the theology is behind this. Is the First Responder God the Father, making the Second and Third Responders God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, a pious, spiritual rendering of police, fire and ambulance?
It’s just as well it’s not October or we would be seeing prayers to the Great Pumpkin.
James Innell Packer died on Friday, July 17, at age 93.
I first met J. I. Packer in the late 1970’s. He had come to speak at a church local to me, and I went to hear what he had say. I was a new Christian and had just read Knowing God so I joined the queue to meet him and have him sign my book.
The person in front of me made the silly mistake of disagreeing with something Packer had said, so I was treated to the pleasure of a five-minute demolishing of the person’s point. When my turn came, I decided not to disagree with anything. But I had questions. Lots of questions.
Happily for me (not necessarily for Packer), I was seated next to him at lunch so I plied him with my questions. The two answers that stayed with me were to: “why should I stick with the Anglican Church since it is gurgling its way down the toilet?” and “what exactly is the Bible?” (I was new to all this, remember).
The first answer was along the lines of, yes, the Anglican Communion may be on its way to ruin but what can you do personally to contribute to your parish to try and make it better. The second was: The Bible is God’s propositional revelation to man. Both answers appealed to me at the time – and still do. Funnily enough, 30 years later when I met him at an ANiC synod and reminded him of the second answer, he looked at me and said: “hmm, I’m not sure I would put it quite like that now”.
A great honour to have met him and a great loss for the church.
There is a very good article about J. I. Packer in Christianity Today. Read it all here:
James Innell Packer, better known to many as J. I. Packer, was one of the most famous and influential evangelical leaders of our time. He died Friday, July 17, at age 93.
I. Packer was born in a village outside of Gloucester, England, on July 22, 1926. He came from humble stock, being born into a family that he called lower middle class. The religious climate at home and church was that of nominal Anglicanism rather than evangelical belief in Christ as Savior (something that Packer was not taught in his home church).Packer’s life-changing childhood experience came at the age of seven when he was chased out of the schoolyard by a bully onto the busy London Road in Gloucester, where he was struck by a bread van and sustained a serious head injury. He carried a visible dent in the side of his head for the rest of his life. Nevertheless, Packer was uncomplaining and accepting of what providence brought into his life from childhood on.
Much more important than Packer’s accident was his conversion to Christ, which happened within two weeks of his matriculation as an undergraduate at Oxford University. Packer committed his life to Christ on October 22, 1944, while attending an evangelistic service sponsored by the campus InterVarsity chapter.
Although Packer was a serious student pursuing a classics degree, the heartbeat of his life at Oxford was spiritual. It was at Oxford that Packer first heard lectures from C. S. Lewis, and though they were never personally acquainted, Lewis would exert a powerful influence on Packer’s life and work. When Packer left Oxford with his doctorate on Richard Baxter in 1952, he did not immediately begin his academic career but spent a three-year term as a parish minister in suburban Birmingham.
A song I wrote a few years ago that will appear in St. Hilda’s online worship on Sunday.
Jane Alexander, bishop of Edmonton, is just like Donald Trump: she likes to tweet. Her tweets don’t usually make that much sense, but they do have one redeeming feature: they make Trump sound like Socrates.
Here is a recent one:
Do all that but, whatever you do, don’t mention Jesus. Or salvation. Or our need of it. Or the Cross. Or the atonement. Or the Resurrection. Or the Holy Spirit. In fact, it’s best just to leave Christianity out of this altogether.
The BBC has announced that the environment isn’t green at all. It’s white. Who knew? I am waiting for Green Anglicans to change it’s name.
The floodgates are open. Don’t all come at once.
From here:
Dear Clergy and People of the Diocese of Huron,
Ever since my ordination to the diaconate, and before, the Anglican Church in our Diocese has been on a journey to listen to the stories of members of the LGBTQ2+ communities. Many of us have come to understand that all persons are wholly made in the image of God. We have welcomed LGBTQ2+ persons into our parishes, they have become our deacons and priests and within the last year have been able to be married in churches that have been given permission to hold same-sex weddings. After thought and prayer, I have decided to remove the requirement that special permission be required by priests or parishes before a same-sex wedding can be held in a parish. All priests in the diocese may marry any two persons who meet the requirements found in our Marriage in the Church Guidelines which is available here.I know that some of you will disagree with this decision. The Anglican church is a large tent of diverse theologies and the Diocese of Huron is no different. Priests have always been able to determine whether or not they are comfortable performing a particular wedding ceremony and this has not changed. I do ask that a priest who does not wish to do a same-sex wedding refer to the couple to another priest or to my office.
The marriage rite that I am authorizing for same-sex weddings and also for opposite-sex weddings is that from the Episcopal Church which may be found here. It has been slightly amended to ensure that the marriage laws of Ontario are being followed. As the marriage rites in the BCP and BAS are authorized by General Synod only for opposite-sex marriages, they may not be used for same-sex marriages
I pray that we may continue to reveal the love of God in all our relationships.
Yours in Christ,
+Todd
St. Aidan’s is in London Ontario in the Diocese of Huron. Its rector is Rev. Kevin George.
The organisation, Black Lives Matter which Kevin George is keen to advertise, declares on its website that it is dedicated to overturning the nuclear family, dismantling cisgender privilege, dismantling the patriarchy, fostering a queer‐affirming network and uplifting Black trans folk. Among other things.
The founders of BLM, Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Alicia Garza were accused recently of not having an ideological framework. They have hastened to assure us that they do: they are Marxists. They want to overturn capitalism and Western civilisation.
As you can see, this fits in nicely with the agenda of the Anglican Church of Canada.
So as to leave no doubt about his political bias, the rector of St. Aidan’s, Rev. Kevin George has a twitter feed on which he displays things like this:
And this:
If he had said similar things about Justin Trudeau, would he still be employed by the Diocese of Huron?
Babies’ Lives Matter
Around 100,000 babies are murdered in the womb each year in Canada.
Since 1988, Canada has had no law protecting the unborn. None. That means a baby can be killed at any time from the moment of conception to the moment of birth.
To my knowledge, no bishop in the Anglican Church of Canada has voiced any objection to this.
Silence is complicity.
Anglican Church of Canada bishops, no matter how much hand-wringing you do over racism, you still have blood on your hands.
All of you:
Anne Germond,
Annie Ittoshat,
Barbara Andrews,
David Edwards,
David Irving,
David Parsons,
Donald Phillips,
Fraser Lawton,
Geoff Peddle,
Greg Kerr-Wilson,
Jane Alexander,
Jenny Andison,
John Chapman,
John Organ,
John Privett,
John Watton,
Joseph Royal,
Kevin Robertson,
Larry Robertson,
Linda Nicholls,
Logan McMenamie,
Lucy Netser,
Lydia Mamakwa,
Mary Irwin-Gibson,
Melissa Skelton,
Michael Hawkins,
Michael Oulton,
Nigel Shaw,
Riscylla Shaw,
Robert Hardwick,
Ron Cutler,
Susan Bell,
Todd Townshend,
Tom Corston,
William Cliff,
If apologising on behalf of your ancestors for being slavers and racists, if self-flagellation over your inherited white-supremacist theft of Indigenous land, if the fear of being an unwitting participant in Systemic Racism hasn’t driven you into a nervous breakdown yet, never fear, this will aid you in your journey into gibbering incoherence.
You can now admit to being an Environmental Racist. Justin Welby has set a good example by doing so. Along with dozens of other lesser, if equally barmy, bishops.
Hurry! Before it’s too late! Don’t miss your chance to admit to Environmental Racism by signing this document today. Every signatory will receive a free plank with which to castigate himself. .
ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM – WHEN #BLACKLIVES DON’T MATTER
(Dear Bishop , if you would like to sign please send your Name and Title to Canon Rachel Mash at rmash@mweb.co.za)
Black lives are disproportionately affected by police brutality; COVID-19 sweeps through crowded vulnerable communities unable to socially distance; toxic dump sites are placed next to poor communities of Black people; indigenous people are forced off their land.
The world is slow to respond to climate change, hanging on to an increasingly precarious and unjust economic system. It is predominantly Black lives that are being impacted by drought, flooding, storms and sea level rise. The delayed global response to climate injustice gives the impression that #blacklivesdontmatter. Without urgent action Black lives will continue to be the most impacted, being dispossessed from their lands and becoming climate refugees.
We stand at a Kairos moment – in order to fight environmental injustice , we must also fight racial injustice.
In the words of Archbishop Tutu “If you are neutral in times of injustice you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
The Anglican Communion Environmental Network (ACEN) calls attention to environmental racism. We issue this urgent statement today, June 19 2020, a day known as Juneteenth in the United States, marking and remembering the official end of slavery in that country in 1865.
There are so many lobby groups within the Anglican Church of Canada, it’s difficult to keep up. We have the Indigenous, LGBTs, Green Anglicans, Proud Anglicans, Conservatives (consisting of three people, assuming no one has died), Marxists (containing most of the rest) and now Black Anglicans of Canada. And they all seem to be in competition for attention. Black Anglicans of Canada, for example, is envious of the recognition of racism directed towards Indigenous people. Abject confessions of clerical racism are not inclusive enough:
I have observed and have been fascinated by the fact that when Canadians acknowledge racism at all, it is only to acknowledge the history of the dehumanization and destruction of Indigenous people. All other racialized groups are excluded from the narrative of racism in Canada. This narrative allows Canadians to ignore and dismiss the intricate web of racism that has systemically and institutionally shaped the development of the Canadian version of multiculturalism.
Canada, we are told, has a pernicious history of slavery of which it should be ashamed. So does just about any other civilization that has ever existed, including African blacks enslaving each other. But we mustn’t let facts intrude on our liturgy of self-flagellation. Besides, as Linda Nicholls has helpfully pointed out, if you are white, you are a racist no matter what you say, do, think or believe. You could spend the rest of your life comatose in a cave in the Himalayas and you’d still be a racist.
I’m pinkish-white so I’m not entitled to an opinion on this. I have one, nevertheless. The idea of racism, that one race is intrinsically inferior to another or deserving of contempt, is so discredited that it is believed by no one other than madmen or those so near the fringe of humanity they are the next best thing to madmen. Yet, somehow, we are all racists.
Our flawed, fallen human nature does nurse an instinctive suspicion or dislike of the other, though: protestants for Catholics; technicians for salesmen; the Welsh for the English; me for Anglican bishops. I have a Chinese friend who dislikes Chinese women drivers. Are any of these racist? By today’s standard of viewing everything through the lens of racism, all of them.
As far as I can see, Black Anglicans of Canada has only existed as an organisation since the beginning of June, 2020. Like so much of what is happening at the moment, it’s as if it spontaneously popped out of the Zeitgeist like a particle from a quantum vacuum.
As an aside, the photo at the top of this article (also in the Anglican Journal article) shows someone holding a sign demanding justice for George Floyd. We all like justice to be visited on others and the policeman who was instrumental in Floyd’s death will, no doubt, experience divine justice at some point. Human justice in North America, however, demands a number of things: a fair trial for the accused and a presumption of innocence. Has anyone anywhere in the media mentioned presumption of innocence – if so, I have not seen it? Do those holding up signs really want the justice our legal system provides? I doubt it.
