Anglican Mainstream

by Peter Ould

The third edition of this perennial favourite has just dropped through the letter boxes of Anglican clergy in England and Wales. It’s an update in the light of the new rules for who can (and still can’t) get married in a Church of England building and the recent developments with civil partnerships.

The existence of a civil partnership is an impediment to marriage. However, a minister may not refuse to marry a man and a woman on the basis that a party of parties has a former civil spouse still living (where the civil partnership has been dissolved) and the English House of Bishops’ Advice to the Clergy on the remarriage of divorcees does not apply.

The next Bishop of Ely will be the Right Revd Stephen Conway, currently the Bishop of Ramsbury in the Diocese of Salisbury. He succeeds the Rt Revd Anthony Russell who retired earlier this year.

Following the formal announcement and a press conference with the local media, Bishop Stephen spent the day touring the Diocese visiting some of his future colleagues and parishioners.

After meeting Diocesan Office staff and others he visited a farm in Ramsey. He then went to Hampton, the site of a new church, for lunch with others from the Diocese. In the afternoon he met with a headteacher from one of our church schools, and visited a small innovative hi-tech business and one of the Universities in Cambridge. His day concluded at Ely Cathedral where he joined worshippers for Evening Prayer.

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By Nigel Bunyan, Telegraph

Congregations across the nation must grasp “the big nettle” of selling off places of worship that have become a crippling financial burden, according to a leading bishop who said one in ten church buildings in his diocese may have to be sold.

The Rt Rev Nigel McCullough, Bishop of Manchester, said that in his diocese alone nearly 10 per cent of buildings owned by the church had become a liability.

He acknowledged that “a worshipping presence, effectively led, can encourage and authenticate the Church of England’s mission and ministry in each place.”

But he claimed that aim was being endangered “by two many unsuitable buildings.”

Writing in the diocesan magazine, Crux, he went on: “That is the big nettle to grasp now.

“Nearly 10 per cent of church buildings are a crippling and unnecessary drain on congregations.

“A goal of our diocesan vision is to increase giving – and included in that aim is `giving up things treasured that are blocking the gospel!’

“That surely has to include church buildings in this diocese that are no longer fit for church or community use.

“These are tough and tearful decisions to face, but face them we must”.

In recent years the Church of England hierarchy has become acutely aware of the financial burden imposed by its stock of decaying buildings.

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From Mailonline

A 65-year-old vicar has stunned church bosses by announcing plans to 'marry' his 25-year-old Nigerian male model boyfriend.

Gay Reverend Colin Coward, a priest at St John the Baptist church in Devizes, Wiltshire, is entering into a civil partnership with his boyfriend Bobby Egbele.

But the marriage has caused a stir among Christians because the couple plan to receive a 'blessing' service in church after tying the knot.

Reverend Colin Coward fell in love with Nigerian model Bobby Egbele after they met at a Christian conference in Togo in 2007. The pair plan to tie the knot in October

Rev Coward has also refused to confirm that he will remain celibate following the union, which is a requirement the Church of England asks of its ordained gay clergy.

Today, Rev Coward, who lives with Bobby in Marston, near Devizes, revealed that he hopes his union sets a 'visible example' to other gay people within the church.

He said: 'My goal is for everyone within the church to feel comfortable with the situation because at the moment the majority of gay Christians marry secretly'.

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From The Telegraph

Fewer than one in five people who voted in a survey asking people which songs they wanted player at their funeral chose hymns.

Timeless classic songs such as 'What a Wonderful World' by Louis Armstrong are increasingly popular choices for final farewells, according to the research for the website My Last Song.

The poll, which asked people to vote on the type of music they wanted played at their funeral, found that 39 per cent chose modern secular music while those who wanted a mixture of all categories accounted for 27 per cent.

Paul Hensby, founder of the website, said the poor showing of hymns confirms the trend towards funerals with a greater secular content …

The Modern British Funeral is more celebratory than grieving as family and friends give tributes to the loved one rather than listening to readings delivered by the minister, said Mr Hensby.

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By Charles Raven

On Sunday 15th August, Bishop Trevor Walters, Area Bishop (West Canada), preached at two churches in Worcestershire. In the morning he visited the congregation at Christ Church Wyre Forest, an 'extra mural' Anglican church plant near Kidderminster and then went on to preach at the parish church of Christ Church Lye in the industrial north of the county.

At Christ Church, Bishop Trevor took as his text Jesus' words in Luke 12:32 'Be not afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.' He spoke powerfully about the way that the expectation of Jesus' return as a real event in history underpins the Kingdom's reversal of worldly values and how we need to guard against a lazy reading of the Bible which accommodates it to what is fashionable.

Bishop Trevor's message came with an integrity which arises out of his many years of pastoral experience and the costly stand for the gospel which  he and his colleagues in the ACNA have taken.  Bishop Trevor continues to be rooted in the congregation of  St Matthew's in Abbotsford, BC where he was previously rector and under whose leadership a series of new churches were planted, despite a long running, continuing and costly battle to resist ejection from the church's property by the leadership of the Anglican Church of Canada.

It was a great privilege to share in this experience of gospel partnership and a very encouraging reminder that despite so much compromise with the prevailing secularism, a new and vital paradigm of Anglican faith and order is emerging.

Rev Charles Raven

By Giles Pinnock, The Anglo Catholic

[.....]  The 15 bishops plea for eirenicism; that we should all respect the different paths that we eventually follow and avoid rancour based in failing to understand why some have become members of an Ordinariate, why some have become Catholics by individual submission, and why some have remained in the CofE.

By Robert Van Der Weyer, New Directions

Robert Van Der Weyer considers the possibility that a free province could be created for traditionalists no matter what General Synod has or has not decided

When the idea of a new province in England for traditionalist Anglo-Catholics and Evangelicals emerged a few years ago, it was assumed that only

General Synod could institute it by means of legislation. In fact, this is legally incorrect, and contrary to historic precedent. Traditionalists have the right to form their own province without reference to General Synod; and this seems the moment to exercise that right.

English ecclesiastical law contains no definition of either a province or a diocese. But Halsbury’s Laws of England, an authoritative commentary, defines a province as ‘the circuit of an archbishop’s jurisdiction’ [vol. 14, para. 428], and a diocese as ‘the circuit of a bishop’s jurisdiction’ [vol. 14, para. 454]. Thus a diocese is a voluntary association of congregations that choose to put themselves under the oversight of a particular bishop; and a province is an association of one or more dioceses placing themselves under an archbishop.

The voluntary nature

The voluntary nature of dioceses, and by implication provinces, was confirmed in 1841 by the Bishops in Foreign Countries Act (still in force), which gives permission for such ‘Protestant congregations as may be desirous of placing themselves under [a bishop’s] authority’ [s2]. Thus the thirty-six Anglican provinces outside England formed not because the convocations of Canterbury and York passed laws allowing them to do so, but because congregations chose to form them. Once created, a province can devise its own constitution and laws.

By Chris Sugden from AAC

The General Synod of the Church of England completed its revision stage of the legislation for Women Bishops in York on Monday, July 12th. The synod agreed to the following draft legislation:

There will be women bishops.

1. Current arrangements set up in 1993 for providing bishops for those who cannot accept the ministry of ordained women will be cancelled.

2. The House of Bishops will begin work on a Code of Practice on how to provide bishops for those who cannot accept women bishops.

3. The draft legislation will be sent to the 43 dioceses for their response.

4. Based on those responses, the legislation will be presented to the Synod in two years time for final approval when it will have to secure two-thirds majority in all three houses of bishops, clergy and laity.
Are there any problems? Yes.

The synod actually voted by a numerical majority, and by a majority in the House of Bishops and the House of Laity for a different arrangement-namely that proposed by the Archbishops that there would be statutory provision for "co-ordinate" bishops to look after those who cannot accept women bishops. This provision would have provided greater assurance by legal means to Anglo-Catholics and conservative evangelicals that they would have a secure place in the Church of England.

Two comments:

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[...] The Catholic movement did not get where it did by waiting for the Church to enact legislation to provide what it wanted. Yet today it has four dedicated bishops and a dozen or so sympathizers, hundreds of clergy, a multitude of buildings and a host of people. Why, then, is it so much on the back foot?

Yet there are many things we could do, if only we would act together to do them. Read more

By Jim Rushton, Fellowship of Word and Spirit  Hat-tip:  David Baker

This comes with warmest greetings to all members and friends of FWS, and to all whose love is for the Church of England and its welfare. What a time we are living in! In large measure our nation has turned from the Christian faith, and many are bold enough to say that what we stand for is negative. The LGBT agenda has become so respectable that it seems only a matter of time for the liberation it calls for to become an accepted feature of Anglican life. Alongside that, pre-marital sex, unconditional divorce and re-marriage, and all other kinds of sexual preferences, seem inevitably to become aspects of acceptable ‘Christian’ behaviour.

The forthcoming General Synod’s attempt to legislate for Women Bishops appears to be pretty small beer when set against such a radical moral agenda. And yet it presents a real crisis for all who understand God’s creational design to be that men and women have different and complementary roles. We cannot ignore the question put by our non-Anglican friends – how can you belong to such a dysfunctional church? What is our bottom line?

Let’s first admit that the question is nothing new. In 1964 I joined the Westminster Fellowship under Lloyd-Jones’s chairmanship. It wasn’t long before Anglican Evangelicals were excluded for belonging to a denomination linked to the ecumenical movement. Sadly I had to conclude that the Doctor was mistaken. Conversely, in 1967, I found myself opposed to the Keele Declaration on ecumenism, and felt alienated from my Anglican Evangelical brothers. In later years I had public confrontations on other subjects, all considered by me to be essential issues of truth. Yet none of these has led me to renounce my membership of the Church of England, and my role as a Christian leader within it. What is my bottom line?

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By Martin Beckford, Telegraph

The Church Urban Fund, the Church of England’s poverty relief arm, is expected to be given the substantial sum by the Department for Communities and Local Government later this year.

It would constitute by far the largest single grant from Whitehall to a church group in recent years. 

The move would prove particularly contentious as the money is likely to be diverted from Preventing Violent Extremism, Labour’s £140million programme aimed at stopping young Muslims turning to radical Islam.

The Government said the grant could not be confirmed, but agreed it did want to use the experience and presence of church groups in every area of the country to help realise David Cameron’s idea of volunteers in the “Big Society” taking over some of the state’s functions.

The Communities Secretary, Eric Pickles, said in a statement: “For years, faith communities have been quietly making a huge difference day-in and day-out, to every single neighbourhood in the country – something that has not been sufficiently recognised by central Government. We can together build on the huge amount of experience faith groups have in getting out into the community.

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From The Anglo Catholic

Electing a New General Synod

In my August Pastoral Letter, I said that I should continue to reflect on current issues in the September letter. Normally one looks for a different, and unrelated topic, but these are not normal times. We have seen the dissolution of the 2005–2010 General Synod and with it the dispersion of its ‘Catholic Group in General Synod’, one of the informal groupings in the Synod. New elections will take place shortly and the 2010–2015 General Synod will be inaugurated by the Queen in November. As happens every five years, there will be an inaugural meeting of the new ‘Catholic Group’ and people will be counting up how many are in the Group, bishops, clergy and laity, and what kind of line they will be taking. That much is predictable and the pattern for it long-established. The officers of the ‘Catholic Group’ will already be in place (provided they have managed themselves to be elected to the Synod) and the Chairman will already have a sense of the direction in which he will want to lead the Group.

Until the July 2010 vote, the second catastrophic vote for Anglo-catholics in three years, there was a division of opinion. One section wanted, on principle, to vote down the women bishops’ legislation completely, on the grounds that Catholic Faith and Order does not traditionally admit women to holy orders and the Church of England has no more competence to change the tradition than it has to change the bible, the creeds, or the sacraments. This section still sees its duty to witness to the Catholic Faith, as the Church of England has received it, and not to give up until the ‘final approval’ vote is lost in 2012 (if, indeed, it is lost). The ‘final approval’ vote on women bishops will need a two-thirds majority in each of the three houses of Synod and it is possible, of course, that it will not clear this hurdle in all three houses. (One projection is that it might fail in the house of laity).

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From Interfax

Sacristan of the Dormition Cathedral in London Archpriest Mikhail Dudko believes English believers leave the Anglican Church as they do not want to put up with its innovations.

"Processes developing in the Church of England give impulse to search for a new religious foundation of life. Female priests and bishops, homosexual marriages and ordination of people who promote "non traditional sexual orientation" bother many believers," Fr. Mikhail told an Interfax-Religion correspondent.

According to him, some of those who can't accept it just put up with it, others leave the Church and some people search for something new and come to the Russian Church to find themselves in it.

"Some Englishmen consciously choose the Russian Church. Metropolitan Anthony said that of all Orthodox Churches represented in England, the Russian Orthodox Church gives maximum freedom to newcomers," the London priest said.

He believes Englishmen feel more comfortable in the Russian Church as it celebrates services both in Slavonic and English, and major part of diocesan priests outside of London are English.

"Certainly they are attracted by positive component of the Orthodox teaching, Metropolitan Anthony stressed that Orthodoxy is return to yourself, to the faith of the ancient undivided Church that existed in the territory of England for many centuries," Fr. Mikhail said.

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By Martin Beckford, Telegraph

Leading traditionalists in the Church of England have pledged to stay within the Church to defeat the current plan for the introduction of women bishops, but have admitted they are "not united".

A letter sent by 15 bishops on the Anglo-Catholic wing concedes that some clergy and lay people will now convert to the Roman Catholic Church after they suffered a defeat at a critical meeting. 

But it goes on to say that others will chose to remain in the Church of England, despite their opposition to women joining the episcopate, some because of "family loyalties" or even "financial necessity".

And the prelates point out that the current plan to introduce female bishops without any significant compromise to opponents must still clear several hurdles in dioceses across the country and then at the General Synod, the Church's governing body, so there is still a chance it may fail.

They urge their fellow traditionalists not to criticise those who choose to take a different path to them.

"We are all bishops united in our belief that the Church of England is mistaken in its actions. However, we must be honest and say we are not united as to how we should respond to these developments," the pastoral letter states.

"Nevertheless we are clear that each of the possibilities we have outlined has its own integrity and is to be honoured. We are resolved to respect the decisions made by laity, bishops, priests and deacons of our integrity, and call on you to do the same. It would be a sad and destructive thing indeed if we allowed our unhappiness and wondering to drift into unguarded or uncharitable criticism of those who in good conscience take a different path from our own. We must assume the best motives in one another, and where there are partings let them be with tears and the best wishes of Godspeed."

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By Edward Pentin, NCR

VATICAN CITY — It appears to be the calm before the storm for the Anglican Communion.

Amid much debate and controversy, last month the Church of England decided to allow women to become bishops in the next two years.

The move greatly upset traditionalist Anglicans, who are now expected to leave the Anglican Communion in large numbers — although not just yet.

All of the traditionalists’ wishes were rejected at a heated July 9-13 meeting of the Church of England’s General Synod in York, England. The traditionalists had sought an amendment for alternative male bishops. The amendment would have allowed parishes unwilling to have a woman bishop to call upon a male alternative who would have his own autonomy and “joint jurisdiction” over those parishes.

But the synod narrowly voted against the compromise, despite it being supported by Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, and John Sentamu, the archbishop of York. Instead, it was decided that women bishops should be able to decide the identity and functions of any alternative bishop, and they would only have to consult a code of practice in dealing with traditionalists.

The ruling will now be put to the Church of England’s 44 diocesan synods before returning to the General Synod, where it must receive a two-thirds majority. It must then receive parliamentary approval before being granted royal assent.

But these are mere formalities, and the decision is effectively passed, bringing to an end years of debate over women bishops in the Church of England.

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From Paul Helm (Hat Tip John Richardson)

[.....]  The Church of England is these days vestigially Erastian. She no longer has to please the king, but she still has to please Parliament when legislation affecting that church is required in order to legalise any proposed changes. A generation or so ago the Church could count on the membership of the Commons having a soft centre of loyal Anglicans, but this has largely disappeared. Furthermore, out in the constituencies there is nothing that can be identified as ‘The Church of England vote’. In political terms, there is nothing to be gained by siding with ‘the traditionalists’. Given its present make up, Parliament is not going to tolerate what it sees as the marginalisation of women in the Church of England, whatever the theological arguments. And similarly with gay bishops or archbishops. Sooner or later , probably sooner, there will an openly homosexual bishop. Over the issue of women bishops, it is not beyond the wit of man to devise another set of compromises aimed at easing the consciences of the ‘traditionalists’, which would succeed in getting through Convocation. But in ensuring the success of such a compromise, no amount of fulmination in the name of the Apostle Paul is going to count. Eventually, the cliffhanger will be decided by the operation ofthe secular ratchet. The changes will be made in one direction only. There won’t be any more re-runs, and no more compromises.

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From The Anglo Catholic

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

'God forbid that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you, but I will tell you the good and proper way.' (1 Samuel 12:23)

These are grave times in the Church of England especially for those of us unable in good conscience to accept that any particular church has the authority to admit women to the episcopate. While we certainly accept the good faith of those who wish to make this change believing it to be God's will, we cannot rejoice with them, not least because of the disastrous cost to Catholic unity.

Our concerns are not only about sacramental assurance though that is of profound importance. If the legislation now proposed passes, it will not provide room for our tradition to grow and flourish. We will be dependent on a Code of Practice yet to be written, and sadly our experience of the last almost twenty years must make us wonder whether even such an inadequate provision will be honoured in the long term.

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By George Conger, CEN

Catholic leaders in Scotland have denounced the coalition government’s plans to leave intact the 1701 Act of Settlement, which bans the monarch from marrying a Roman Catholic.

“When a monarch is free to marry a Scientologist, Muslim, Buddhist, Moonie or even Satanist but not a Catholic, then there’s something seriously wrong,” said Scottish Roman Catholic Bishop Joseph Devine of Motherwell.

In a written answer given to the House of Commons on June 30, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Cabinet Office, Mr. Mark Harper stated “there are no current plans to amend the laws on succession”

Bishop Devine, who during the General Election had urged Catholics not to vote Labour due to their social policies, expressed outrage over the Cameron government decision.

“What trust and confidence can we have in such a leader? He is barely two months into government and is already showing alarming signs of the arrogance and disdain so often associated with power,” he said according to the Scotsman.

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By Matthew Davies, Episcopal Life Online

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori challenged those attending Sung Eucharist at historic St. Paul's Cathedral here July 25 to be "ready, willing and able" to speak out and take action against the world's injustices and indignities.