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.

Blinkers

From a post on Ecclesia commenting on 'The(?) Evangelical Group of the General Synod calling for licensed lay people as well as clergy who contract marriages to people of the same sex to be disciplined:

Its letter describes its own perspective as “biblically orthodox” and refers to “the clarity of Scripture and the vision it offers for human flourishing”. Yet interestingly it seems less interested in punishing those who are unjust to the poor, migrants and others who are vulnerable, a matter on which the Bible is a great deal more clear and consistent than on homosexuality and gender identity. Nor does it acknowledge the hazards of being judgmental. Overall there is a notable lack of awareness of the risks of projecting human bias on to God.

Well quite, blinkers to avoid frightening the horses. I'm reminded of a certain Reform fanboy church not to far from here who seem to only focus on a few bits of Christian ethics. I wonder if one of their parishioners still reads here ;-)

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.

Coward on Cowards

Colin Coward's reaction to the Forward in Faith hypocricy of yesterday

I want to be a member of a church that is honest and truthful, open and loving, and properly faithful to Jesus Christ and all of God’s children, and I will now work and campaign with even greater resolve for a church in which women’s ministry is valued at all levels and LGBT who live with the highest commitment to love and fidelity can also live openly and truthfully. To hell with the Forward in Faith closet!

But go and read the original!

if only they could hear themselves

From One News Now

Christians of all traditions are called to transform the culture -- not conform to it," he says in reference to Romans 12:2. "But the evangelical left repeats arguments from The New York Times' editorial page and seems to think such cultural conformity will win applause. History shows that accommodationist Christians are ultimately irrelevant Christians.

Can I mantion right-wing Christian views on Ronald Reagan, George Bush and as for Rush Limbaugh! The right needs to look at itself before criticising others for 'cultural conformity' and accommodationism!

Preferring to live in darkness

David Keen reports that the Brewers owners of the ex-SPCK bookshops are still skulking around trying to hide things - getting google to remove a blog post containing questions they'd rather not answer. Unfortunately google have caved in to these playground bullies.

State sponsored vigilantes

.. in Italy, and guess what their principal target appears to be non-Italians!
In today's Guardian:

Silvio Berlusconi's cabinet yesterday issued an emergency decree allowing mayors to enrol citizen patrols to combat crime following an outcry over a number of rapes blamed on immigrants.
The measure was already contained in a security bill working its way through the Italian parliament, but the prime minister said the decree would allow the government to quickly respond to "the huge clamour raised by recent episodes".
Local officials will oversee unarmed volunteer citizen patrols tasked with alerting police to criminal behaviour.
Six police unions warned in a statement that the decree could encourage vigilante behaviour. But the interior minister, Roberto Maroni, argued that it was designed to cut back on such vigilante behaviour, not encourage it.
Assailants beat up Romanians in Rome after a girl aged 14 was raped on February 14, and immigrants were also attacked after four men raped a woman in Guidonia, south of Rome.

It could be just a means of boosting the police force but the examples and

the huge clamour raised by recent episodes

give the lie to that

We won't be Berlusconi's scapegoats

We won't be Berlusconi's scapegoats, say Gypsies From the Observer:

In a desolate field just beyond the Rome ring road, a single line of caravans is a stark sign of the times in the new and increasingly anti-immigrant Italy. The vehicles are the modest homes of 25 Gypsy families, who have become the first victims of a campaign waged by the city's new right-wing mayor to crack down on foreign criminals and illegal Gypsy camps.

Oblivious to their parents' distress, children laugh and duck behind cars, squirting water pistols at each other as the adults contemplate an uncertain future. But the white sheets waving on clothes lines seem to symbolise a mood of surrender and gloom. Police, accompanied by dogs, have just chased this community from the city centre site it had occupied for 20 years.

'We work for a living, but in a couple of hours, everything we had created, the relationship we had built with locals over decades, was wiped out,' said Alessandro, 36.

Difficult to say more, I'm in the midst of reading Jessica Duchen's Hungarian Dances which also treads on this ground exposing the hypocrisy.