Anglican Mainstream

Should you and your church wish to contribute you may do so via Anglican International Development at 21 High Street, Eynsham, OX29 4HE, or by donated through the Donate button here earmarked for Chilean Earthquake. If you wish to send funds directly please email anglicanaid@gmail.com for bank details.  All proceeds go to the church in Chile. Thank you for your concern!

CHILE EARTHQUAKE:  £7365.00 now raised.  Read the rest of this entry »

Read Anglican Mainstream, Andrew Goddard, John Nolland, John Richardson , Charles Raven, Peter Ould

Also read Julian Mann on "The Practicalities of the Liverpool Affair"

Read Church of England Newspaper report of responses

Read Church Times report here

…In other words, some say this, and some say that, and who is to say who is wrong? Yet this is not a recipe for unity but for disaster … The midway position on this topic is not one that can be sustained, not least because it is not one that the key protagonists wish to hold. [emphasis added] John Richardson

…By having side-by-side with equal validity contradictory opinions which strike at the very heart of what it means to be human and what it means for Christ to be Christ is to create an unstable and contradictory message. This is not a missional approach.  Peter Ould

By David P Goldman, First Things

Moral equivalency is a matter of dogma in the mainstream media: When five hundred Christians were massacred in their homes by machete-wielding Muslims in Nigeria’s Plateau Province on the night of March 7, news reports claimed it was simply retaliation for previous attacks on Muslims. That is an outright falsehood, according to The Barnabas Fund, an interdenominational Christian organization devoted to assisting Christians around the world who face persecution.

Here is the Barnabas Fund’s press release laying out the facts:

Read here

From Bay Times

Blake Spears and Lanz Lowen have been together for over 34 years. They told me that they still have great sex, contradicting the common belief that sexual interest inevitably wanes in a long-term relationship. How do they do it? “One reason,” Lanz said, “is that we’ve been in an open relationship from the very beginning. If we hadn’t been open, we wouldn’t have been able to grow individually or as a couple.” But, they write, this was a journey they took “without a roadmap…Information about how couples navigate this terrain is surprisingly lacking. We were curious about the experience of others and assumed many long-term couples might offer valuable perspectives and hard-earned lessons.” So, a few years back, they decided to use their combined training and experience in research and psychology to do an independent, in-depth study of other long-term open gay male relationships.

They hoped to provide the community with an accurate picture of what non-monogamy actually looks like in the lives of gay men. Their study has now been completed. It’s an intimate look into the lives of 86 couples who have each been together for a minimum of 8 years, and it can be accessed at www.thecouplesstudy.com.

This study is a fascinating read because the authors largely avoid speculation and let the participants speak for themselves. One finding that fascinated me was the many varieties of “openness” that the couples practiced. Some only played together, some only separately, and some did both. Some only allowed anonymous outside encounters, while others allowed “friends with benefits” and still others built polyamorous families with multiple partners. Some (about ten percent) had no rules at all governing outside sex, while at the other end of the spectrum others created detailed ground rules and contracts. Every imaginable kind of “openness” seemed to work for someone.

Read here

By Janice Shaw Crouse, VOL

March 9, 2010, is the first day that same-sex couples in District of Columbia (D.C.) will be able to have legal marriage ceremonies.

More than 100 couples – some coming from nearby states – have licenses for ceremonies. So-called same-sex "marriages" are legal in five other states – Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont – where the words "bride and groom" are replaced with the names of the individuals, who are each called "spouse" or "Person A" and "Person B."

Those who oppose same-sex "marriage" are called by derogatory labels: bigot, narrow-minded, hate-filled among the nicest. Such name-calling obscures the very real problems associated with watering down and denigrating traditional marriage. <http://magazine.townhall.com/hannity

Read the rest of this entry »

From CARE

CARE has a longstanding commitment to positive and informative relationship and sex education through our evaluate project. As such we have worked closely with head teachers, school governors and parents in delivering a first class sex education package. We are committed to supporting government in creating a positive framework for relationship and sex education. However, the Children, Schools and Families Bill includes some unhelpful provisions which will marginalise parents in both faith and community schools.

With an impending General Election, legislation can become law even when it has not completed its passage through both houses, so long as it has been through one House and has at least had a Second Reading in the other. In this context it goes into a process called the ‘wash-up' where the Opposition has considerable influence in determining what parts of the Government's Bill become law. It is therefore particularly worthwhile writing to the Conservative front bench asking them to block the education parts of the Children Schools and Families Bill.

Please write to Michael Gove MP, the Shadow Secretary of State for Children Schools and Families, Nick Gibb MP, Shadow Schools Minister and Tim Loughton MP, Shadow Children's Minister at the House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA. While writing in your own words, do use the arguments set out here.

Prayer: Please pray that the unenlightened sex and relationships clauses in the Children Schools and Families Bill would not become law.
 

From CARE

The passage of the Equality Bill provides Parliament with its first opportunity to amend the sexual orientation, goods and services legislation that resulted in the closure of Catholic adoption agencies, formalising a principle in law which has profoundly damaged religious liberty in the UK.

An amendment to the Equality Bill has been tabled and will hopefully be debated on 23 March. If passed, it would allow Catholic and Evangelical Adoption and Fostering agencies to operate in line with their doctrine.

One of the ways in which people can add momentum to this issue is by large numbers of people signing the petition below. If you have not yet done so, could you take two minutes to sign and encourage others to do the same?

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/AdoptionChoice

Prayer: Please pray that the adoption debate would proceed on Tuesday and that the amendment would be overwhelmingly supported so that Catholic and Evangelical Fostering and Adoption agencies can continue to exist.

From Joseph Meaney, LifeSite News

Wondrous news! The mainstream media and even the United Nations have "discovered" the 30 year old crisis of "missing girls." The Economist (the recent edition entitled, "Gendercide") and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) came out with the "news" that over 100 million girls and women that should be alive are not.

The culprits are parents who want to have sons only and use sonograms to identify the sex of their child in the womb. The end result is millions of sex-selection abortions of unwanted girls every year.

Pro-lifers have denounced this "slaughter of Eve" in the strongest terms for some time now. It is undoubtedly the greatest campaign of deadly discrimination against women in history. Incredibly, with few exceptions, the problem of sex-selection abortion is steadily worsening in Asia and around the world!

Read here

From The Living Church

Received by email:

Communion Partner Response to the Consent for Consecration in Los Angeles

It is with profound sorrow that we, the Communion Partner Bishops and Rectors, express our deepest regret to our brothers and sisters in the Anglican Communion for the action of the majority of the diocesan bishops and standing committees of the dioceses of The Episcopal Church in voting to consent to the consecration as a bishop of a woman living in a sexual relationship outside Christian marriage. Unfortunately, where restraint was respectfully requested by the leadership of the Communion, it has been ignored. Where the General Convention has counseled study of the Anglican Covenant, this action has rendered that counsel moot.

Therefore, we disassociate ourselves from this action and grieve the state of separation that exists in The Episcopal Church and Anglican Communion. This separation is a witness to the need for the Anglican Covenant as the means through which dioceses and congregations in The Episcopal Church can affirm their commitment to the Anglican Communion.

Read here

LENT IV – St. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne  (686)

LITURGICAL THEME FOR THE DAY: Today we remember Cuthbert, who at the age of eight had a prophetic remark from a playmate turn his mind to sober and godly thoughts, and his upbringing as a shepherd gave him ample time for prayer. One night he saw in the sky a dazzling light and angels carrying a soul up to heaven, and resolved to dedicate his life to God. Some years later Cuthbert came to Melrose Abbey asking to be admitted as a monk. It was from here that he began his missionary work, which he continued from Lindisfarne when he became abbot there. Consecrated bishop in 685 he remained an indefatigable traveler and preacher, walking all over his diocese, and spending time as a hermit on Farne Island in between. After only a year however, he felt his end coming and resigned his office, dying on Farne in the company of a few of his monks.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Jeff Walton, IRD

A strong extrovert, Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson has said that he is happy when at the center of attention. It should come as no surprise then that the New Hampshire cleric was all smiles in early January, when he presided over his diocese’s first same-sex wedding with cameras in tow.

Robinson called it "a holy day" for those who believe in the sacrament of marriage. "It is, oh, so holy," the cleric pronounced, draped in an embroidered blue and white robe with a green vine motif and capped by a matching mitre.

While Robinson has previously drawn attention as the Anglican Communion’s first openly homosexual bishop, his blessing of one of the first gay marriages in New Hampshire exacerbates a crisis in the 80 million-member communion: not just of homosexual bishops, but the widening practice of same-sex blessings and marriages.

While only the most liberal of dioceses are seriously entertaining the idea of nominating homosexual leaders, let alone elect them, a survey of diocesan policies in November by Anglican writer David Virtue revealed that about half of U.S. dioceses either permit or plan to permit their parishes to perform the blessings of same-sex unions.

That means a gay wedding is quite possibly coming to an Episcopal church near you.

Read here

From AAC

Beloved in Christ,

Where is the moral outrage from the liberal or the conservative camp? In the last week, hundreds of Christians, principally Anglicans, have been butchered in their beds while they slept or massacred in their yard as they fled their burning homes in the rural areas surrounding Jos, Nigeria. Have the liberals used up their compassion and outrage over the sexuality legislation proposed in Uganda? Are the threats of government sanctions there of graver consequence than pregnant women and small children, the old and the infirm being chopped up by Muslim activists with machetes? Where are the police and the army while these repeated attacks occur during curfew hours? It is reported that an entire busload of murderers disembarked at one village in the wee hours to set about what they chose to call revenge.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Simon Caldwell, The Catholic Herald

More than 40 breakaway Anglican parishes in Canada have decided to convert en masse to the Catholic Church, it emerged this week.

They have voted to take up the offer made by Pope Benedict XVI in November that permits vicars and their entire congregations to cross the Tiber while keeping many of their Anglican traditions, including married priests.

The leaders of the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada – a member of the breakaway Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) – have sent a petition to the Vatican requesting full communion with Rome through the implementation of the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus.

Read here

Editorial: New Directions

From Christians Together

Father Zakaria Botros is a Coptic priest preaching the Gospel and has had a multi-million dollar price on his head by Al Queda and others.

Why are the Radicals so enraged by this elderly Coptic priest from Egypt who is in his 70s? Because Botros is waging an air war against them, and he is winning. Using state-of-the art satellite technology to bypass the efforts of Islamic governments to keep the gospel out of their countries, Botros is directly challenging the claims of Muhammad to be a prophet, and the claims of the Qu’ran to be God’s word. He systematically deconstructs Muhammad’s life, story by story, pointing out character flaws and sinful behavior. He carefully deconstructs the Qu’ran, verse by verse, citing contradictions and inconsistencies. And not only does he explain without apology what he believes is wrong with Islam, he goes on to teach Muslims from the Bible why Jesus loves them and why is so ready to forgive them and adopt them into His family, no matter who they are or what they have done.

Read here

By Albert Mohler

Are there clergy who don't believe in God? That is the question posed by a new report that is certain to receive considerable attention — and rightly so. Few church members are likely to be disinterested in whether their pastor believes in God.

The study was conducted by the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University, under the direction of Daniel C. Dennett and Linda LaScola. Dennett, of course, is one of the primary figures in the "New Atheism" — the newly aggressive and influential atheist movement that has gained a considerable hearing among the intellectual elites and the media.

Read here

From Church Times

There have been two new developments in the ongoing Equality Bill story, neither of which will bring much joy to those hoping to celebrate a civil partnership in their local Anglican church.

First, from a story by Simon Sarmiento in today's Church Times, entitled Alteration proposed for Bill. It appears that the latest amendment to be tabled would allow denominations as a whole to opt-in or opt-out as far as having civil partnerships within their church buildings is concerned. In the case of the CofE it could be that General Synod or the Archbishops' Council are the ones who will decide. Some extracts from the news item:

Read here

Iona Institute

The Iona Institute's public lecture will take place at 8pm, Thursday, March 25 in the Davenport Hotel, Dublin 2. The topic is 'Sex and teenagers: what does and does not reduce teenage pregnancy and sexual activity'. The speaker will be Professor David Paton.

The talk is partly a response to a Law Reform Commission (LRC) discussion paper, Consultation Paper on Children and the Law: Medical Treatment, published in December which recommends, among other things, that more more teenagers be given rights to consent to medical treatment, including surgery and contraception, without the permission of their parents.

One recommendation isthat teenagers as young as 14 and 15 should be allowed to make their own decisions about medical treatment provided they understand the nature and consequences of the treatment. This would also include access to contraception without their parents' knowledge or permission.

Professor David Paton, an expert in the field of teenage pregnancy, will present evidence that questions whether making contraception more freely available to teenagers does in fact reduce teenage pregancy.

Read here