Kevin Kallsen and Archbishop Venables discuss the Anglican Communion… with some very surprising answers.
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Interview with Archbishop Venables
May 25th, 2011 Andy Posted in Anglican Church in North America, Anglican Communion, Anglican Consultative Council, Church of England, Gafcon, Primates Meeting Comments Off
The ACI The New ACC Articles: Procedural Issues
August 20th, 2010 Jill Posted in Anglican Communion, Anglican Consultative Council Comments Off
Although we have written before of our concerns over the substance of the new Articles of Association of the Anglican Consultative Council, until now we have said little about our concerns over the procedures followed by the Anglican Communion Office in managing the development of these Articles. Others voiced complaints and we remained hopeful that the ACO would respond to these complaints with transparency and by providing satisfactory answers. This has not happened.
We are dismayed that the Communion Office is either unable or unwilling to provide even the most basic information to those who have raised serious concerns: what information was provided to the provinces; when was it provided; and what was their response. An amendment of the constitution is a significant action by an organization, especially one subject to legal duties. Maintaining this information is the most basic level of diligence required of an organization’s secretariat. The lack of transparency and public accountability throughout this process is one of the most regrettable episodes of Communion life in recent years.
Our concerns are only heightened by information suggesting that the ACO may not have followed advice given to it on the necessary procedures for adopting the new Articles. In November 2008 Robert Fordham of Australia, then a member of the ACC standing committee and the “convenor” of its “sub-committee on Constitutional Issues,” addressed the Joint Standing Committee on the status of the new constitution and “what steps have to be taken at this stage.” He advised that the revised draft of the Articles needed to be submitted to the provinces for ratification at that time. He noted that after ACC-13 had approved a draft of the new Articles in 2005 the ACC’s legal advisor, Canon John Rees, had held “extensive discussions” with the UK charity commission and had engaged in “considerable work” to produce a new draft for the February 2008 JSC. At that meeting in February 2008, the JSC then amended the draft further before approving it. Mr. Fordham then states:
The Anglican Consultative Council’s Standing Committee: Who Is Janet Trisk?
August 16th, 2010 Jill Posted in Anglican Consultative Council Comments Off
AM Comment: Canon Trisk, a priest and lawyer, is taking the place of Ms. Nomfundo Walaza of South Africa, a member of the lay order, in contravention of the ACC's constitution and bylaws. Read here
by Sarah Hey, Stand Firm
While it's clear that she is a progressive/revisionist activist of the most extreme, the Sea of Faith Network is certainly a few steps beyond revisionist Anglican activism — beyond support for non-celibate gay relationships and their affirmation, beyond feminist Marxist liberation theology, beyond manipulation of political processes at ACC meetings, beyond heretical Christology. Other than the Sea of Faith's interest in the use of religion, it would be hard to find a more antithetically religious organization than one that denies the objective existence of God. And just because Janet Trisk has had some book reviews posted on the Sea of Faith Network doesn't mean she's a member of such an interesting, albeit godless, organization. But the shocking fact is that Janet Trisk is a member of the Sea of Faith Network.
As most know, Janet Trisk — a Caucasian lawyer turned Anglican priest from South Africa — was recently appointed to the Standing Committee of the Anglican Consultative Council, one of the four Instruments of Communion.
Already well known as a TEC-gospel-supporting activist, who proposed the amendment to remove Section Four at the Jamaica meeting of the Standing Committee and engaged in the political activism all of us are familiar with in order to attempt to strip the Covenant of enforcement ability, the curious might wonder if there is more to learn about Trisk. And there is.
First, here are the basics of her bio, as found over on the Anglican Communion website:
Questions regarding John Rees’ clarifications of the new Anglican Consultative Council Constitution – Michael Poon
August 14th, 2010 Jill Posted in Anglican Consultative Council, Global South Comments Off
From Global South Anglican
John Rees’ recent clarification on the new Anglican Consultative Council raises disturbing questions on the continuing viability of the Anglican Communion. As convener of a subgroup of the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order, tasked to review the Communion structures – due to report in the Cape Town Meeting later this year, I am puzzled why IASCUFO has not received report of such substantial work in its meeting in Canterbury in December 2009. Many Anglican colleagues worldwide have devoted huge effort to work on Communion matters, with the aim to find ways for the Communion to overcome its “ecclesial deficit.” Like some, I feel our labour spent on Communion matters is perhaps abused and wasted by the lack of transparency and due consultation.
Communion infrastructures have arisen in haphazard ways since 1945. The new ACC Constitution, I fear, is another instance. The lack of in-depth consultation on the constitutional changes stands in sharp contrast with the thoroughgoing processes in the drafting and dissemination of the Anglican Communion Covenant.
The controversy on the new ACC Constitution may well derail the already difficult processes in the adoption of the Anglican Communion Covenant. Churches in the southern continents may well be tempted to look for more radical alternatives for a more permanent solution to recent Anglican disputes.
I ask for the following clarifications:
The ACC Articles of Association: Questions Remain
August 13th, 2010 Jill Posted in Anglican Consultative Council Comments Off
From ACI
Yesterday the Anglican Communion News Service published an interview with Canon John Rees, legal advisor to the Anglican Consultative Council, that responded in part to questions we previously raised in our paper, “Contrasting Futures for the Anglican Communion: A Transformed ACC and the Anglican Covenant.” We are grateful to the Anglican Communion Office, Canon Rees and the ACNS for responding directly on this matter of wide interest and for their renewed commitment to transparency in the process of structural reform now underway in the Communion. We continue to believe that these changes raise significant questions, that many of these questions remain unanswered, and that these questions should be considered throughout the Anglican Communion. We emphasize that the questions we raise below are not posed to Canon Rees alone, but are addressed more broadly to all those interested in the future of the Communion.
1. Canon Rees begins by providing helpful background to the constitutional changes recently implemented at the ACC. He notes that one of the objectives of the new Articles was to eliminate personal liability to which the trustees responsible for managing the Communion’s charitable assets might be exposed. As we emphasized in our original paper, this is an objective we fully share. But reiterating this objective does not address the concern we raised, which was instead whether “this legal entity should be one of the Communion Instruments itself and [whether] the fiduciaries charged with overseeing these charitable activities should be the same as those comprising one of the bodies responsible for faith and order in the Communion.”
The ACC Constitution: An Interview with ACC’s legal adviser Revd Canon John Rees
August 13th, 2010 Jill Posted in Anglican Consultative Council Comments Off
From ACNS (Hat Tip: Kendall Harmon)
Q. When did discussions about this change first take place? Who drew up the new articles and on what basis?
The issue was first raised at the time of the ACC meeting in Dundee, Scotland, in 1999, and a drafting committee was established after the Hong Kong ACC meeting in 2002. The drafting committee met with me on a number of occasions between 2002-2005, and the Committee’s draft was the subject of intensive discussion at the Nottingham ACC meeting in 2005.
Q. There’s recently been media speculation that proper procedures weren’t followed as regards getting assent to the change from the old constitution to the new.
It’s good to see that there are Anglicans out there who care that things are being done properly. Certainly no one in the Communion is above criticism. I’ve already explained that a change to the Constitution was planned and discussed at several ACC meetings. Then, as required by Article 10 of the old constitution, the draft was circulated for approval by the provinces of the Communion after the 2005 Conference. It finally achieved the requisite level of replies—two thirds of Anglican Communion provinces—and this was reported to the ACC in Jamaica in 2009, after which it was submitted for registration at Companies House and by the Charity Commission.
ACC faces questions about the legality of its new constitution
August 7th, 2010 Jill Posted in Anglican Consultative Council Comments Off
By George Conger, CEN
The Anglican Consultative Council failed to follow its rules in soliciting approval for its new constitution, critics of the London-based ‘instrument of communion’ tell The Church of England Newspaper.
Some provinces were never asked to approve the ACC’s new constitution, while others were asked to approve “in principle” a draft version that differed from the final document lodged with the Registrar of Companies for England and Wales on July 10, 2010, while a third group reported that the draft it approved was substantially similar to the one adopted.
The resulting uncertainty has likely resulted in two Anglican Consultative Councils under law: a limited corporation created under English law on July 12, 2010, and an English charitable trust registered in 1978.
The ACNS reported that ACC legal adviser John Rees told the Standing Committee at its London meeting on July 24 the new Articles of Association had been drawn up between 2002 and 2005, before submission to the Provinces between 2005 and 2009. “In all essentials the content of the new Constitution is as circulated to the provinces between 2005 and 2009” ACC spokesman Jan Butter said.
However, Global South leaders tell CEN the claim of inconsequential revisions advanced by the ACC was misleading. Citing the Anglican Communion Institute’s analysis, they note the new constitution engages in a power grab that makes the delegates subordinate to the Standing Committee, while also encroaching upon the authority and prerogatives of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Primates Meeting. It is also unclear if all of the provinces were consulted about the changes introduced by the new constitution, including the subordination of the ACC to the European Union’s equality laws.
Why the ACC and the Standing Committee have become largely irrelevant to most of the Anglican world
August 2nd, 2010 Jill Posted in Anglican Communion, Anglican Consultative Council Comments Off
By A S Haley
[.....] indeed, why should anyone any longer care? The Anglican Communion has devolved from a State-church led union of national churches, sharing common doctrine and worship, into a cacophony of scattered voices, the loudest of which proclaim "doctrine" which would make Archbishop Cranmer despair that his own noble witness to the Anglican cause (as it then was) had been utterly in vain. As others have observed, there is today no longer a "Communion", but a "Dysunion.
[.....] There will be today no dramatic burnings at the stake, for witnessing to either truth or lies. Instead, the Anglican Consultative Council, once a more or less democratic institution that is now replaced in legal function by its undemocratic "Standing Committee", will become a largely irrelevant group of member-trustees who are alien to the least sort of risk (financial or evangelical), whose days will be occupied in reviewing summaries of indaba groups, and in affirming meaningless and toothless resolutions. The aforesaid "Standing Committee" will morph into a conveniently newsworthy synecdoche for the Communion itself — which is to say that all the relevant news about the "Anglican Communion" will soon be encapsulated in reports of the Committee's comings and goings. And people will very soon forget that there is any kind of parent organization. The word "Anglican" itself will cease to have any referent, and the word "Communion" has already become an oxymoron.
Anglican Communion Standing Committee Gives A Pass to Episcopal Church
July 28th, 2010 Jill Posted in Anglican Communion, Anglican Consultative Council, TEC Comments Off
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By David W. Virtue, Virtueonline
Despite a proposal from orthodox Anglican leader Dato Stanley Isaacs from the Province of South East Asia that the American Episcopal Church be separated from the rest of the Anglican Communion over sexuality issues, Committee members of the Standing Committee of the Anglican Consultative Council (aka the Anglican Communion Office) rejected the plea, arguing it "would inhibit dialogue and … would therefore be unhelpful."
While rejecting the proposal, Standing Committee members agreed to defer further discussion on the matter until progress on a listening project had been considered. Currently, Anglicans worldwide are participating in "The Continuing Indaba and Mutual Listening Project," which is intended to open the ears of Anglicans to the experiences of homosexual persons, according to a July 26 bulletin from the Anglican Communion Office.
The committee, which included the Archbishop of Canterbury, met in closed sessions July 23-27 at the Anglican Communion Office in London.
Once more no one is prepared to exercise godly discipline on the Episcopal Church for its blatant defiance of the Windsor Report and a Covenant in the process of being ratified by all the provinces of the Anglican Communion over sexuality issues which has seen TEC defy the communion not once, but twice by electing an avowed homosexual and lesbian to the episcopacy. The open defiance of the communion's requested Moratorium is met with muted outrage as no one is prepared to put their foot down and lay down the law, largely because the communion's Instruments of Unity are stacked with liberals and token orthodox believers who get shot down if they should so much as raise their voices. Witness what happened to Isaacs.
Groaned one English cleric, "Why, oh why, oh why is TEC permitted to retain such influence in a Communion in which it is an insignificant flea on the rump of the orthodox majority?"
Shifting the Deck Chairs: the ACC’s Standing Committee In-Action
July 27th, 2010 Jill Posted in Anglican Consultative Council Comments Off
By A S Haley
In the Anglican Communion Office's report of the second day of proceedings at the meeting of the ACC's "Standing Committee", we find this paragraph:
A proposal from Dato' Stanley Isaacs that The Episcopal Church be separated from the Communion led to a discussion in which Committee members acknowledged the anxieties felt in parts of the Communion about sexuality issues. Nevertheless, the overwhelming opinion was that separation would inhibit dialogue on this and other issues among Communion Provinces, dioceses and individuals and would therefore be unhelpful. The proposal was not passed, and the group agreed to defer further discussion until progress on Continuing Indaba project had been considered.
Dato' Stanley Isaacs is a Malaysian attorney, and one of only two lay persons serving on the fifteen-person Committee. The next meeting of the ACC will be his last, because he has already served at the two previous meetings. The fact that his motion did not pass is a reflection of the composition of the Committee, as discussed in this earlier post. Its membership now comes largely from ECUSA and those provinces sympathetic to it.
Interview with Archbishop Duncan
July 27th, 2010 Jill Posted in Anglican Communion, Anglican Consultative Council Comments Off
From Anglican TV
ACC membership rules ‘are discretionary’ says official
July 16th, 2010 Jill Posted in Anglican Consultative Council Comments Off
Friday July 16 2010 Church of England Newapaper By George Conger
OBSERVANCE of the Anglican Consultative Council’s bylaws are discretionary, a spokesman for the organisation tells The Church of England Newspaper, when they are inconsistent with its political agenda.
ACC spokesman Jan Butter told CEN the future membership rules of the organisation which seek to promote gender parity take precedence over its existing rules.
However, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s press spokesman tells The Church of England Newspaper, the ACC staff’s views are not the final word on the matter, as the appointment of Bishop Ian Douglas and Canon Janet Trisk to the ACC Standing Committee are under legal review.
Weakened by charges of mismanagement following ACC-14 in Jamaica, the credibility and moral integrity of the ACC Standing Committee is now being questioned over the propriety of seating two members whom critics charge are ineligible to serve.
The Anglican Communion News Service (ACNS) reported on July 2 that two new members of the Standing Committee would attend its July 23-27 London meeting. Bishop Paul Sarker, moderator of the Church of Bangladesh and Bishop of Dhaka would attend the meeting in place of the President Bishop of the Middle East, Dr Mouneer Anis of Egypt, who resigned in protest in February.
Battle over American seat on the ACC looms
May 17th, 2010 Jill Posted in Anglican Consultative Council Comments Off
By George Conger, CEN
A battle is looming over the composition of the Anglican Consultative Council’s (ACC) Standing Committee with conservative leaders urging the chairman of the ACC declare the seat of American delegate Dr. Ian Douglas vacant.
The fight over Dr. Douglas’ seat comes in the wake of sharp criticism of the integrity of the ACC’s staff and hostility towards the usurpation of powers by the Standing Committee voiced by Global South Anglican leaders attending last month’s Singapore encounter.
While the fight over Dr. Douglas’ seat may not have the emotional intensity as the consecration on May 15 of Mary Glasspool as Suffragan Bishop of Los Angeles, moderates within the Global South leadership tell The Church of England Newspaper the continued malleability of the rules of the Anglican game in favour of the US may well prove too much.
A professor of missiology at the Episcopal Divinity School, a clergy delegate to ACC-14, and deputy from Massachusetts to the Episcopal Church’s General Convention, Dr. Douglas has served on a number of pan-Anglican commissions including the Lambeth 2008 organizing committee. One of the rising stars of the Episcopal Church and widely acknowledged as its most articulate spokesman at ACC-14 in Kingston, the ACC delegates elected the first-time American clergy delegate to an open seat on the Standing Committee at the meeting.
Anglican Consultative Council Reinstates the White Man’s Burden
April 15th, 2010 Jill Posted in Anglican Consultative Council Comments Off
By Canon Gary L'Hommedieu, Virtueonline
"If over 80% of Anglicans live in the global south, why is this not reflected in communion structures?" writes Indian Ocean Primate Ian Earnest in an April 12 letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury in which he protests, among other things, the illicit transfer of power from the Primates' Meeting to the Anglican Consultative Council and its Joint Standing Committee.
Why indeed?
The short answer is that the present "structures" of power and influence continue to reflect the colonial history of the Anglican Communion. More to the point, these persistent "structures" demonstrate how that history continues unabated. While cosmetic changes have been made to church governance, and while token appointments give the appearance of social transformation, the fact remains: the present structures of power and influence in the Anglican Communion continue to serve the same socio-economic interests as during the pre-conscious Age of Colonialism. The same dominant group that colonized the Global South is still in charge and serving primarily the same social interests-its own.
Here's the difference: We are at least two generations past the world-shattering consciousness-raising of the mid-twentieth century. The West has long stood convicted of its imperialism, its historic tendency to exploit the resources and even the will of indigenous populations, and even to romanticize this through mythology such as Kipling's "White Man's Burden." We know about the near determinism, the almost transcendent force, whereby "structures" of self-interest project their structured history through relations of power unto the third and fourth generation, even against the most guarded good intentions and sublime gestures of penitence.
In other words, the usurpation of the Primate's Meeting and the transfer of power to the ACC and its Standing Committee were done in the full light of day, in the full awareness of history, and in the consciousness of full intentionality. It was a deliberate usurpation of power and authority without any need for the former rationalization that "it's for their own good". It was done so that the same group could make sure that the major perks of the institution-in particular, the power to define its future-continued to fall to them. Read here
Standing Committee meets in London, reaffirms call for ‘gracious restraint’
December 19th, 2009 Jill Posted in Anglican Communion, Anglican Consultative Council Comments Off
By Matthew Davies, ENS
The Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion, during its Dec. 15-18 meeting in London, has issued a call for "gracious restraint in respect of actions that endanger the unity of the Anglican Communion."
According to the text of the resolution, the call for "gracious restraint" came in response to the recent election of the Rev. Mary Glasspool, a partnered lesbian woman, as a bishop in Los Angeles, as well as the decision by some dioceses in the U.S. and Canada "to proceed with formal ceremonies of same-sex blessings," and the "continuing cross-jurisdictional activity within the communion."
The committee said its call reaffirms Resolution 14.09, passed by the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) at its meeting last May, which urges "the implementation of the agreed moratoria" on such actions. The ACC is the communion's main policy-making body. The moratoria on same-gender blessings, cross-border interventions and the ordination of gay and lesbian people to the episcopate were first proposed by the 2004 Windsor Report and have been reaffirmed by successive Primates Meetings and supported by the 2008 Lambeth Conference of bishops.
The Episcopal Church's General Convention, meeting in July, passed Resolution D025 saying that God's call to ordained ministry is "a mystery which the church attempts to discern for all people through our discernment processes acting in accordance with [its] Constitution and Canons …"
Glasspool is the first openly gay priest to be elected bishop since the passage of Resolution D025 and the first since the 2003 election and consecration of New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson. Robinson's consecration as bishop prompted the Windsor Report with its call for a moratorium on such actions.
GC2009: Rowan Among The Ruins: What Should the ABC Do Now?
July 23rd, 2009 Jill Posted in Anglican Church in North America, Anglican Consultative Council, Archbishop Of Canterbury, General Convention, TEC Comments Off
By David W Virtue, Virtueonline
The House of Bishops of the Church of England meets in September when they will consider the new North American Anglican province’s (ACNA’s) Constitution and Canons. Following Durham Bishop Tom Wright’s scathing critique of what transpired at GC2009 there is every likelihood they will support ACNA. A number of Evangelical and Catholic bishops are already doing so – eight have signed the Private Member’s Motion – unprecedented in General Synod history.
This puts Dr. Rowan Williams in a very difficult position. At one level he can now offer a two-tier solution to the Anglican Communion’s malaise. He can also argue that he can now recognize both TEC and ACNA. He alone decides who to invite to the Lambeth Conference, and can circumvent the Anglican Communion Office and Canon Kenneth Kearon who has sworn eternal fealty to TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada and would never recognize ACNA if his job depended on it. (He needs TEC money to keep ACC afloat).
The General Synod is not in any way beholden to the ACC and can do as it likes. It could even, if it chose, reduce its financial contribution to ACC and ACO. If the Synod debates and passes the motion next February or next July, Kearon can think or say what he likes, it will not affect anything. The determination of who is or is not in communion with the CofE is a joint decision for the two Archbishops of Canterbury and York, who would find it difficult to refuse a Synod resolution. If ACNA is in then TEC may even be shown the door.
The truth is the ACC has become irrelevant following Jamaica and the debacle over Resolution 4. The vast majority of the CofE do not know what the ACC is, let alone cares. Churchgoers do not elect their ACC "representatives" they are chosen by the national church. Therefore ACC approval is something of an irrelevance. From now on one can expect that province by province will make its own decision. If the great bulk of the Communion declares itself to be in communion with ACNA, the ACC will have to fall in line.
Questions over pro-gay cash to support ‘Indaba’
June 20th, 2009 Jill Posted in American Anglican Council, Anglican Consultative Council Comments Off
From the Church of England Newspaper
QUESTIONS have been raised by a conservative American church pressure group over the impartiality of the Anglican Consultative Council’s “Continuing Indaba Process” following disclosures that the funding for the project came from a single American Episcopal priest linked to pro-gay activist organizations.
During the May meeting of ACC-14 in Jamaica, the ACC announced that it had been given a $1.5 million grant to continue the Listening Process on human sexuality. Delegates were told the grant, the largest in the ACC’s history, was made by the Satcher Health Leadership Institute of the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia.
However, when pressed by a reporter for the American Anglican Council (AAC) in Kingston, the ACC conceded the Satcher Institute was a conduit for a gift made by the Rev Marta Weeks, a retired Episcopal priest and philanthropist in Miami, Florida.
Long active in social justice issues, Mrs Weeks endorsed the Jan 200 Religious Declaration on Sexuality, Morality, Justice and Healing that called for the “full inclusion of women and sexual minorities in congregational life, including their ordination and the blessing of same sex unions” as well as “a faith-based commitment to sexual and reproductive rights, including access to voluntary contraception, abortion, and HIV/STD prevention and treatment.”
Mrs Weeks told the AAC that she had been approached by the Satcher Institute to fund the programme, and had agreed due to her long-standing relationships with the Institute’s Center for Excellence for Sexual Health.
According to public records the primary funder of the Center for Excellence for Sexual Health is the Ford Foundation, which gave Morehouse a $3m grant to start the programme. The Ford Foundation, the ACC charges, is a well-known combatant in the US’s culture wars, and has denounced traditionalist views on sexual morality.
Indaba “Monitor”: Jesus Had No Problem with Man-Boy Love
June 16th, 2009 Jill Posted in American Anglican Council, Anglican Consultative Council, Proselytization Comments Off
By Greg Griffith, Stand Firm
Ultimately, the responsibility of what to do about this falls on Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. He has the most questions to answer of anyone. He has staked the future of the communion on "keeping everyone at the table" through this "Continuing Indaba" process. And as it stands now, he has as an overseer of the organization that secured funding for it, an ordained minister who believes that Jesus approved of grown men having sex with boys.
We took a little heat for having the unmitigated gall and poor taste to question – albeit in a lightly speculative manner – if the "next frontier" for the Episcopal Church perhaps involves… errr… "extra-species romance."
But as anyone familiar with Johnson’s Law knows, the surest way to turn perversion into doctrine in the Episcopal Church is to make a joke about it.
And so, here we are.
Ralinda Gregor at the American Anglican Council has done us all a tremendous service by doing the research for, an putting together, an article titled Money, Sex, Indaba: Corrupting the Anglican Communion Listening Process. This is must-reading for all of us, so hie thee hence after familiarizing yourself with the basics. Then, return for some discussion about what you can actually do about it besides shaking your head and gnashing your teeth.
To begin with, the Anglican Communion Office has in this crisis over homosexuality been cynically attempting to appease the overwhelmingly conservative African provinces, where 2/3 of the world’s Anglicans reside, by concocting a never-ending conversation about sexuality and theology designed to "keep everyone at the table" for as long as possible. This is the organic evolution of the "listening process" mentioned in the 1998 Lambeth Resolution 1.10 (which, incidentally, categorically rejected homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture).
To make matters worse, the ACO has decided to label this newest incarnation of the listening process "Indaba," an African word for a process by which decisions are arrived at by a more-or-less egalitarian process the basis of which is group discussion.
The problem continues with the fact that this "Indaba" process requires money, and wouldn’t-ya-know-it, cash is in short supply around the Anglican Communion Office.
Enter the Satcher Institute, a "progressive" organization that receives a large amount of its funding from the odious Ford Foundation. One of the Satcher Institute’s departments is called the Center for Excellence in Sexual Health (CESH), and they have volunteered to secure funding for the Anglican Communion Office’s "Indaba" project to the tune of $1.5 million. This funding was approved at last month’s meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council in Jamaica.
The money comes from a wealthy Episcopal priest in the Diocese of Southeast Florida named Marta Weeks, who has long supported "progressive" causes.
Seeing any red flags yet? Good, because here’s where you really need to start paying attention:
Money, Sex, Indaba: Corrupting the Anglican Communion Listening Process
June 15th, 2009 Jill Posted in American Anglican Council, Anglican Consultative Council, Listening Process Comments Off
By Ralinda B Gregor, AAC
The next stage of the Anglican Communion’s attempt to resolve its differences over theology, sexuality and the authority of scripture will involve more "listening processes," but this time those processes will be paid for by a retired Episcopal priest who advocates same-sex blessings. The money given by the Episcopal priest will be monitored by a group of sex "experts" who advocate a vision of sexual freedom and "justice" that bears little resemblance to mainstream Christian doctrine or tradition, and at least one of these "experts" believes that pornography, bestiality, and multiple sex partners are not inherently harmful or wrong. Working quietly in the background is a foundation advocating sexual and reproductive health "rights" and charting a strategy to increase the voice and influence of progressive religious groups in the public sphere.
The Listening Process, also known as the "Continuing Indaba Project," was announced last month at the Kingston, Jamaica meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council after a briefing by the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Anglican Communion Office (ACO). The staff of the ACO, under the direction of the Archbishop of Canterbury, announced that a $1.5 million gift was given to fund this project-a gift 2-3 times the size of any previous gift received by the Anglican Communion Office for its work, and at a time when financial reports concede diminishing giving and reserves for the troubled Communion. The delegates to the Anglican Consultative Council were told that the money was coming from a grant through the Satcher Health Leadership Institute at the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia.
After subsequent questioning at press conferences, it turns out that the Satcher Institute is not the source of the $1.5 million dollars.
So where did the money come from? The Rev. Marta Weeks, a retired Episcopal priest from the diocese of Southeast Florida, has donated $1.5 million to fund the entire project through 2011. Weeks and her late husband have supported a wide variety of causes and educational institutions. As noteworthy as her gifts are, her beliefs on the issues the Anglican Communion is dealing with are even more significant. In January of 2000, she signed the Religious Declaration on Sexuality, Morality, Justice, and Healing which calls for a "sexual ethic focused on personal relationships and social justice rather than particular sexual acts. All persons have the right and responsibility to lead sexual lives that express love, justice, mutuality, commitment, consent, and pleasure." This sexual ethic "applies to all persons, without regard to sex, gender, color, age, bodily condition, marital status, or sexual orientation." It calls for "full inclusion of women and sexual minorities in congregational life, including their ordination and the blessing of same sex unions" as well as "a faith-based commitment to sexual and reproductive rights, including access to voluntary contraception, abortion, and HIV/STD prevention and treatment." [emphasis added]
ACC Secretary General is candidate for WCC General Secretary
June 5th, 2009 Chris Sugden Posted in Anglican Consultative Council, News Comments Off
From The Living Church
The Rev. Canon Kenneth Kearon, secretary of the Anglican Consultative Council, is on the short list of candidates being considered for the position of secretary general of the World Council of Churches.
During the primates’ meeting in Alexandria, Egypt, in February, The Living Church learned that Canon Kearon had been nominated for the post, and had the endorsement of Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams to succeed the Rev. Samuel Kobia of Kenya.
The WCC’s general secretary serves as the ecumenical organization’s chief executive officer, as a spokesman for its council, and is responsible for promoting the strategic vision of the Geneva-based ecumenical organization.
The general secretary will be elected at the WCC’s Central Committee meeting Aug. 26- Sept. 2. Fr. Kobia announced last year he would not seek a second term of office.
On June 3 the Catholic Information Service of Africa reported that the five other finalists for the post included the Rev. Daryl Balia of the South African Methodist Church; the Rev. Robert Anderson of the Church of Scotland; the Rev. Fernando Enns of the Brazilian Mennonite Chu rch; the Rev. Seon Won Park of the Korean Presbyterian Church; and the Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit of the Church of Norway. Official confirmation of the short list could not be made, however.
(The Rev.) George Conger