Teaser Tuesday - 28th May

Teaser tuesdays now hosted here.

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

The procession was suitably stately. This was in a part of town where funeral cortèges were not uncommon - a hazard of playing host to a crematorium, you might say - and were always treated with ceremony and respect.

from Touching Cloth - Rev Fergus Butler-Gallie - tales of a young priest. His anecdotes though funny tend to be long winded, but worth the wait, and then the occasional emotional punch!

GAFCON's contempt for the Church of England

Here's Nick Baines (Bishop of Leeds) on GAFCON's latest conference and communique.

I was once at a meeting of evangelical bishops in England when three English Gafcon men came to meet us. They had stated that this was the case and that bishops were giving their clergy a hard time. We asked for evidence so we could consider it before we met. Bishop Tom Wright and I were just two who were outraged at the misinformation, misrepresentation and selective re-writing of history presented to us. When we began to challenge this, we were told that we shouldn’t get bogged down in the detail and could we move on. And they got away with it. I am not making this up.

But go and read the whole article. Anyone who isn't signed up to their shibboleths is automatically an enemy - if Nick Baines feels this then they need exposing and naming for what they are before they damage more churches with their self serving rhetoric.

Nigeria and Anglican Mainstream

I was looking through some old blog entries here and came across this from 2007 when I quote a letter to the Church times from Anglican Mainstream about legislation against homosexuality in Nigeria:

Anglican leaders in Nigeria have been working closely to uphold human-rights issues in the proposed legislation on homosexuality.

I wonder how that's going? As you probably know that law has recently come into effect and Anglican Mainstream have been somewhat silent on the issue.

Liturgy and Doctrine

In its comments on the Pilling report, 'Anglican Mainstream', has this:

Anglicans believe that liturgy expresses doctrine.

And then argues that blessing of a same sex civil partnership would therefore change Anglican doctrine. Doesn't this imply that any Anglican service which isn't approved of by synod has the same effect? I didn't realise that an action by a local church had such powerful consequences. I'm off to plan a service!

And I'm sure that many Anglican Mainstreamish churches are quite happy to have unauthorized services when it suits them.

The Church of England lies!

Or at least a committee drafting documents in its name does! From today's document about the same-sex marriage consultation:

We have supported various legal changes in recent years to remove unjustified discrimination and create greater legal rights for same sex couples and we welcome that fact that previous legal and material inequities between heterosexual and same-sex partnerships have now been satisfactorily
addressed.

So far and no further hey? But that statement is manifestly untrue - the majority of Bishops in the House of Lords voted against those changes - historical revisionism rules!
[Updated 13 June] The Church of England has now put up a document here giving the contributions made by the bishops in the Lords during the debates on the civil partnerships bill, it says:

The bishops, consistent with their place as independent and non-whipped members neither spoke nor voted as a bloc on these issues when they were before the House.

So some bishops spoke in favour and some opposed - that still means a line 'We have supported various legal changes..' is misleading - none of the bishops who voted 5-1 for the wrecking amendment eventually voted for the passing of the bill.

Teaser Tuesday -22 February

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

I'm still reading Michael Arditti's Easter, so here's anoter teaser from his novel about the Church of England:

'Tradition or not, it's a bit bloody much to expect me to ponce down the nave with that bunch of flowers as if I were Rudolph Valentino'
'I think you mean Nureyev.'
'Same thing. They were both wooftahs.'

Extending the teaser slightly...and if I say that the first speaker is Philip I'll let you guess who the other one is!

Teaser Tuesday - 1 February

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

Following our recent trip to see Jesica Hausner's Lourdes, I see that the latest Michael Arditti novel - Jubilate is also about Lourdes - this second link describes an Arditti visit to Lourdes a few years ago, and from the first link I nick this quote from the book about the place:

Love. The place may be crass and exploitative, but the pilgrims who come here do so in good faith. Like everywhere else, that’s been invested with a sense of the sacred. It has an aura. It’s that aura that inspires people to keep coming. But it’s also us, or rather they, who’ve given it that aura: their hopes, their faith and above all, their love. It’s not something that’s beamed down from above.

Here's the Guardian review which alerted me to the publication.
But enough about the book I'm not reading, the Arditti review made me want to go and re-read his earlier book about sex, death, lies and the Church of England 'Easter' - written in 2000 - which seems aeons ago now:

The world has changed so much so fast that the modesty of her life no longer seems a virtue but a sign of its insignificance. As she gazes at the battlefield banners and the war heroes plaques, all she can think is how little her life has been and how little difference it has made.

(she's sitting in St George's chapel Westminster Abbey). That's a splendid random quotation but I'll hope to see how well the book stands the test of what's happened over the last 10 years. This is what Stephen Bates wrote about it all those years ago. And I'll keep an eye out in the local library for Jubilate!

Agreement is a good thing - isn't it?

Maybe being English, we think of making agreements as fundamentally good as providing channels for discussion. However when that agreement binds you into ways which lead you into different ways of communicating where the presuppositions behind the agreement only seem to want to exclude than hard questions need to be asked rather than rushing into a warm feeling that we have something new in common.
These thoughts are sparked by reading the announcement of the launch of the No Anglican Covenant Coalition - I recommend a visit!
The Church mouse on the covenant is also worth a read

I'm sorry I'll blog that again

Looks like I was right to be doubtful, this is the Archbishop's 2010 New Year message:

The text is here

We share the risks. The big question is, can we share the hopes and create the possibilities? Because it's when we do share the hopes that we really see what it is to belong together as human beings, discovering our own humanity as we honour the human dignity of others.

I'll own this quote too!
So ekklesia, at least, has it wrong and I'm pretty certain that I heard a news bulletin yesterday, referring to the message, talking about children as a treasure so I guess the BBC at one stage got confused too! The BBC - at least on their web site - has it correct now.

The worth of an individual

Rowan Williams New Year message for 2010 - at least I hope it is the one for 2010 the youtube page I got this from appears to be in some doubt where it has a 2008 date and very old comments. Ekklesia though is in no doubt and has the same words!

Jesus said where our treasure is, that's where our hearts will be. Our hearts will be in a very bad way if they're focused only on the state of our finances. They'll be healthy if they are capable of turning outwards, looking at the real treasure that is our fellow human beings.

May that be true for us all through this coming year.

Maggi (and others) on Rowan

Maggi on Rowan's letter on the latest Anglican travails:

(quoting Jane Shaw on The Episcopal Church):
"...is not going grey in the pews. It is a Church that has young people engaged and involved at all levels. It is, therefore, a Church that will thrive and grow into the future — and that cannot necessarily be said of other Churches in the West. And those young people have an enormous passion for mission..."...Whether you agree with the covenant or not, ++Rowan is to be applauded for making a sincere attempt to move forward in an impossible situation. But we shouldn't just leave it to "the people in charge" - ordinary people who are concerned about the future of the Church should not assume they can do nothing. We all need to think and pray and speak up in an attempt to help create a solution that works.

Nick Baines reflections on her words are also worth a read.

No surprise there

Nick Baines shows up the inconsistencies at the heart of the 'Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans':

Despite protestations of innocence, the scheming behind FCA does not give us confidence that dodgy behaviour will receive the same biblical or ethical scrutiny as is applied to questions of sexual behaviour.

I do wish that the Bishop of Chester with his apparent support for the bunch of FCA schismatics would take note. Why does this diocese make their bishops into such strange characters?

Two links

Both these discussions seem to be going around the faith blogs at the moment, there's David Keen on Clergy Vacancies and Church Decline giving two surveys with diametrically different conclusions on the impact of a long vacancy. Bishop Alan also comments:

It seems to be the case that the quality of the vacancy, good or bad, is often down to a small number of laypeople’s giftedness and contribution. This is as much the case, if not more, for small parishes. Anything that strengthens and encourages those who do step up to various plates constructively is good news long term.

As we're now in the 18th month of a vacancy (soon to come to an end!) I'm glad that the news is not always bad!
And then there's How to talk to atheists about your faith.

In short

Or for those who want to read the executive summary of the Lambeth conference - that's it.

Balance and Lambeth

For some reason, I'm reminded of this film having read the review at the weekend.
Couple of links:

• MetaCatholic on Romans, sex and idolatry - I will put a towel around my head and get around to a serious read of it (and his previous articles!)
• Then there's Graham Turner's sermon from Sunday morning (ms word format ;-(), though his talks page also has it as a wav file.
• Finally there's a pretty balanced assessment from Peter Ould - a call for self-examination on all sides!

High tech in 1998

Back at the 1998 Lambeth Conference there was a webcam set up for spotting bishops set up at http://www.cs.ukc.ac.uk/events/lambeth98/ (unsurprisingly the link no longer works!).
I seem to have this one shot from that webcam:

I can't find an archive of other 1998 webcam shots - so far - anywhere on the web - though I think I did have a animated gif from it copied to a cd somewhere. I'll keep looking!
I can't find a webcam this time around, maybe they're keener on controlling the media - though the flickr photos are good!
(the intellectual level on this blog seems to have gone down since the Stockhausen post)

The poor dears

Consecration of gay bishop Gene Robinson led to ridicule for Anglicans, say traditionalists at Lambeth conference | World news | The Guardian

The consecration of a gay Anglican bishop has led to sexual license, a new form of colonisation and ridicule for the church, it was claimed yesterday by (some! ed.) bishops attending the Lambeth conference in Canterbury.

"In some places the church is ridiculed as the gay church so membership is lost. It is experienced as a new form of colonisation," the draft said. "It is seen as leading to sexual license. Bishops cannot be a symbol for unity when their consecration divides the church. In some regions the issue has become a basis for hostile actions."

What was it Jesus was ridiculed as? Ah yes:

friend of sinners and publicans

Spot the bishop

ACNS/Sweeny July 26th
Originally uploaded by Lambeth Conference 2008

they are - honest, thanks to pseudopiskie for this. When I take a service with one of these folk in September (no other clergy present!) I'll need to inspect his vestments carefully so that I recognise him

Rowan Williams on GAFCon

His statement is here. I'm sure that even the Daily Telegraph can understand this!

Meet the FoCAs

here, as the man says, it makes a lot of sense now - GAFCON indeed!