U.S. Episcopal Church dissidents win court ruling
By Michael Conlon, Religion Writer Fri Jun 27, 3:44 PM ET
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Eleven conservative congregations that broke with the U.S. Episcopal Church and want to keep property worth millions of dollars have won a second court decision, the dissident churches said on Friday.
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The latest ruling by a Virginia judge is part of the upheaval over orthodoxy in the global Anglican community.
The Episcopal Church, the faith's U.S. branch, has been beset by disputes, including one involving the installation of an openly gay bishop.
On Friday, Judge Randy Bellows of the Fairfax County Circuit Court ruled that the Virginia law under which the congregations want to keep the property is constitutional, the 11 churches said.
In April, the same judge said the 11 congregations are covered by the law, which was written during the Civil War era. The statute says any "church or religious society" that "divides" remains under the control of the majority, as does any property entrusted to it.
"We have maintained all along that our churches' own trustees hold title for the benefit of these congregations. It's also gratifying to see the judge recognize that the statute means what it says -- it's 'conclusive' of ownership," said Jim Oakes, vice chairman of the Anglican District of Virginia, to which the traditionalist churches now belong.
"We're thrilled to see this litigation nearing an end," he added.
LOCAL DIOCESE CALLS RULING 'REGRETTABLE'
Further appeals and additional litigation appeared likely because the 2.4 million-member Episcopal Church claims that all church property belongs to it and that when a congregation switches allegiance, the property is merely "abandoned."
The Episcopal Diocese of Virginia called the ruling "regrettable" and said it still believes the law violates the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of church-state separation.
"The diocese remains steadfast in its commitment to current and future generations of loyal Episcopalians and will continue to pursue every legal option available to ensure that they will be able to worship in the churches their Episcopal ancestors built," it added.
Among the 11 breakaway congregations are the Falls Church and Truro Church, which have affiliated with the Anglican Church of Nigeria, led by Archbishop Peter Akinola.
In the case of Falls Church and Truro, the property is said to be worth at least $25 million, with historic roots: George Washington and his father served on the vestry at Truro.
The law involved in Friday's ruling was adopted in response to numerous church splits arising during the 19th century, before, during and after the Civil War.
Both Methodists and Presbyterians successfully invoked the statute immediately after its adoption in 1867.
The 77 million-member Anglican Communion, a global federation of national churches, has been in upheaval since 2003 when the Episcopal Church consecrated Gene Robinson of New Hampshire as the first bishop in more than four centuries of church history known to be in an openly gay relationship.
Disputes over scriptural authority, the blessing of gay unions, and other matters have become a worldwide issue and threaten turmoil this summer when Anglicans gather for their once-a-decade Lambeth Conference in Britain.
The ruling came while a rebel summit of conservative Anglican leaders was under way in Jerusalem.
There are several property disputes in the United States.
(Editing by Peter Bohan and Chris Wilson)
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Friday, June 20, 2008
Friday, June 13, 2008
Multiply, Church tells followers
Blue Star
Friday, June 13, 2008
Multiply, Church tells followers
Thiruvananthapuram: Thou shalt procreate more. Not another commandment, but it’s an announcement by the Catholic hurch in Kerala, nevertheless.
With the number of followers dwindling alarmingly, the church wants believers to embrace the Christian concept of sexuality that blends love and procreation on an equal footing.
The just-concluded Kerala Catholic Bishop Council (KCBC), the powerful body of 29 dioceses, has decided to support families that produce more children. Besides the hectic pace of modern life, economic constraints are also a factor in family planning.
“We are planning to develop a pro-life ministry in a big way. We want to promote and encourage more life. Our family commission has submitted many proposals to check the dwindling numbers of the believers,” said Father Stephen Alathara, KCBC deputy secretary.
According to the last census, the growth rate of Christians has come down to 19.2 per cent from 22 per cent.However, church insiders say the figure stands at 18.5 per cent now.
© Copyright 2008 HT Media Ltd. All rights reserved.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Multiply, Church tells followers
Thiruvananthapuram: Thou shalt procreate more. Not another commandment, but it’s an announcement by the Catholic hurch in Kerala, nevertheless.
With the number of followers dwindling alarmingly, the church wants believers to embrace the Christian concept of sexuality that blends love and procreation on an equal footing.
The just-concluded Kerala Catholic Bishop Council (KCBC), the powerful body of 29 dioceses, has decided to support families that produce more children. Besides the hectic pace of modern life, economic constraints are also a factor in family planning.
“We are planning to develop a pro-life ministry in a big way. We want to promote and encourage more life. Our family commission has submitted many proposals to check the dwindling numbers of the believers,” said Father Stephen Alathara, KCBC deputy secretary.
According to the last census, the growth rate of Christians has come down to 19.2 per cent from 22 per cent.However, church insiders say the figure stands at 18.5 per cent now.
© Copyright 2008 HT Media Ltd. All rights reserved.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
World's Oldest Christian Church?
World's Oldest Christian Church?
Archaeologists Claim to Have Found Evidence of Early Worship Site in Northern Jordan
By SIMON MCGREGOR-WOOD
JERUSALEM, Israel, June 11, 2008
Archaeologists in Jordan claim to have unearthed the world's oldest Christian church.
Rahab Church
A team led by Dr. Abdul Qader al-Hassan discovered a cave under the ancient Christian church of St. Georgeous in Rihab, in northern Jordan.
The archaeologists claim the cave dates from the period between the years 33 and 70 and that the site was both a dwelling place and a site of early Christian worship. This would mean it was used by Christians in the years immediately following the death of Jesus in Jerusalem.
"We have evidence to believe that this church sheltered the early Christians: the 70 disciples of Jesus Christ," al-Hassan told The Jordan Times.
He said that a mosaic inscription on the floor of the Church of St. Georgeous refers to "the 70 beloved by God and Divine."
The cave would have been used by these early Christians who came to Rihab to flee Roman persecution in Jerusalem, al-Hassan said.
The practice of Christian rituals in the Holy Land was banned by the Roman authorities until the year 313.
The earliest established sites of Christian worship in the region date from the 3rd century, and the claims of al-Hassan and his team have yet to be fully tested.
In November 2005, Israeli archaeologists made similar claims for a site at Megiddo, near the biblical Armageddon. They discovered ancient mosaics within the grounds of a prison.
There is some skepticism within the archeological community about this latest discovery as it claims to be so much older than existing Christian churches.
Archaeologists Claim to Have Found Evidence of Early Worship Site in Northern Jordan
By SIMON MCGREGOR-WOOD
JERUSALEM, Israel, June 11, 2008
Archaeologists in Jordan claim to have unearthed the world's oldest Christian church.
Rahab Church
A team led by Dr. Abdul Qader al-Hassan discovered a cave under the ancient Christian church of St. Georgeous in Rihab, in northern Jordan.
The archaeologists claim the cave dates from the period between the years 33 and 70 and that the site was both a dwelling place and a site of early Christian worship. This would mean it was used by Christians in the years immediately following the death of Jesus in Jerusalem.
"We have evidence to believe that this church sheltered the early Christians: the 70 disciples of Jesus Christ," al-Hassan told The Jordan Times.
He said that a mosaic inscription on the floor of the Church of St. Georgeous refers to "the 70 beloved by God and Divine."
The cave would have been used by these early Christians who came to Rihab to flee Roman persecution in Jerusalem, al-Hassan said.
The practice of Christian rituals in the Holy Land was banned by the Roman authorities until the year 313.
The earliest established sites of Christian worship in the region date from the 3rd century, and the claims of al-Hassan and his team have yet to be fully tested.
In November 2005, Israeli archaeologists made similar claims for a site at Megiddo, near the biblical Armageddon. They discovered ancient mosaics within the grounds of a prison.
There is some skepticism within the archeological community about this latest discovery as it claims to be so much older than existing Christian churches.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Anglicans divided over homosexuality: Lambeth in trouble
David Marr
June 10, 2008
The church I was ordained in is not the church I am in now --Peter Jensen
The Anglican Church faces a modern Great Schism, with gay-tolerant Christians on one side and radical "Bible-believers" on the other. And at the forefront of the hardliners is Australia's outspoken evangelist Peter Jensen.
Pilgrims to the mount of olives late this month may be startled to see a couple of hundred Anglican divines kitted out in purple toiling up the slope. Most of the faces will be black. Back home these men are princes of the church; their followers run into tens of millions. But somewhere among the bishops, dressed incongruously in civvies, will be the humble, smiling face of Peter Jensen, the Archbishop of Sydney.
What's afoot in Jerusalem is the destruction of the Anglican Communion, the worldwide church loosely aligned to the Archbishop of Canterbury. It spread with the empire and has so far survived, despite all its contradictions, for about 450 years, guided by the tart good sense of its founding monarch, Elizabeth I: "There is only one Jesus Christ and all the rest is a dispute over trifles."
The church has held together despite Charles Darwin, the bells-and-smells insurgents of Anglo-Catholicism, the collapse of the British Empire, the discovery of the pill, the arrival of divorce, women as priests and even women as bishops. But the gathering in Jerusalem is intent on "scattering" this communion of 75 million believers because the North American church has gone soft on homosexuality.
"The church I was ordained in is not the church I am in now," Peter Jensen declares with brisk resignation. He puts himself among the true "orthodox" Anglicans defending their faith against the temptation to drift with the times. The archbishop insists it's bigger than sex. "That is a presenting issue that has really opened up the whole chasm between those who will come to terms with their culture at the expense of Biblical authority and those who won't." He holds out no hope for the old worldwide church. "Unlike some other people, I believe this is permanent. I don't think the Americans will step back from that. Not for a moment."
Jensen is talking New Hampshire. In the ice- hockey stadium of the state's university, in the presence of more than 50 bishops, a massed choir, a band and about 3000 Anglican faithful, a gay man was consecrated bishop on November 2, 2003. Even the hardest hardliners don't pretend this was the first gay bishop in the history of Christendom, or even contemporary Anglicanism. The trouble this time is that everyone's in the know.
Gene Robinson had been a priest in the diocese for nearly 30 years. Mark Andrew, his partner of 16 years, was there at the ceremony. On instructions from the police, both wore bulletproof vests. But the event went off peacefully enough - except for one clergyman haranguing the assembly about the evils of anal sex, and a knot of demonstrators standing rink-side with placards that read: "Fag Church, Fag Gospel", "Thank God for September 11", and "AIDS is God's Curse".
Protests about Robinson's consecration had been rolling round the Anglican globe for months. Peter Akinola, the leader of 20 million Nigerian Christians and the moving force behind the Jerusalem pilgrimage, denounced Robinson's elevation as "a Satanic attack on God's Church". Anglican leaders across Africa, the Middle East and Asia gave the events in New Hampshire blistering notices. Jensen calls them "plain disobedience to the teaching of the Holy Scripture". For him, judgement doesn't come more implacable.
International rage over new hampshire came tinged with elation. The consecration of a gay man was seen from the first as an opportunity to be seized, a chance for "Bible-believing" Anglicans to build a new, purer church. That's the mission GAFCON - the Global Anglican Future Conference - will be pursuing in Jerusalem. "I'm not saying to the Americans: 'Pull your head in,' " says Jensen. "We said that five years ago, and that didn't work. They will do their thing. But if they do do that thing, then their freedom frees us as well."
High titles and fancy dress can confuse us into thinking Cardinal George Pell is the biggest figure Australia has on the ecclesiastical world stage. In fact, it's Peter Jensen. Pell is one of any number of conservatives in the ruling faction of the Catholic Church - and said to be rather out of favour, these days, with the Pope - but Peter Jensen is a decisive leader of a breakaway faith that claims to represent half the keen Anglicans on earth. In this cause, he has spent his energy, intelligence, prestige and an unknown amount of Sydney's money. The city's archbishops have been travellers in the past, but Jensen is a frequent flyer in the pursuit of schism, turning up wherever needed - Blackpool, Nairobi, the Red Sea and, later this month, Jerusalem.
But he does not represent Australia. Sydney is the oldest and richest diocese in the country. It's growing more strongly than any other in the land. But in many eyes it's hardly Anglican at all. Visitors from Melbourne worshipping in a Sydney parish might think they've wandered into a protestant chapel: where are the crosses and vestments? What's this demand that all believers be Born Again in Jesus Christ?
GAFCON is only step one. Most of the 200 or so bishops, after issuing a communique on the shape of the new "alternative communion", will return to their dioceses and boycott Lambeth, the Archbishop of Canterbury's meeting of all the Anglican bishops of the world, in July. Sydney's six bishops have decided not to sit down with the Americans.
"If you believe that the practice of homosexuality is sinful - such as to exclude a person from the kingdom of God - then these bishops are intolerable, false teachers," explained Phillip Jensen, brother of the archbishop and the fiery dean of Sydney's St Andrew's Cathedral. The younger Jensen called on the world's bishops, even those who have already accepted their invitations, to renege and stay away. "To reinforce your error of judgement by attending is to make the same mistake as Herod when he executed John the Baptist."
The archbishop is careful not to use the "split" word. It has terrible legal consequences. After New Hampshire, when some very wealthy US Anglican parishes split from their bishops to demonstrate their devotion to the Bible and their hostility to homosexuality, the courts told them they were free to go wherever God called them - but they had to leave their property behind. Jensen knows he can't take the immense wealth of the Sydney diocese into a new church. "I can't. I'm part of a constitution, which is virtually unchangeable, of the Australian church. I wouldn't want to. I love the church. It would be bad for Christianity, bad for the gospel."
The property is a set of golden fetters. "There couldn't possibly be a division in the sense of a legal division," says Jensen. He talks expansively instead of an old empire evolving, families scattering, ties loosening, but with friendship and regard somehow surviving. "I think there is going to be an evolution in the Anglican Communion. It has occurred. And what the Future Conference is going to work out is how to live best within that evolution. That's its business."
More bluntly, GAFCON is planning to collapse the church into a sort of Balkan confusion in which national branches turn their backs on each other, bishops dabble in one another's territory, and dingo fences cut across the landscape to keep "orthodox" Bible-believing, homosexual-denouncing Anglicans safe on one side of the wire, and "liberals" on the other. If the split comes, it will shatter national churches as well as the international communion. It will be particularly messy for Australia.
Who Jensen really represents in manoeuvring his diocese into the splitters' camp is far from clear. The endorsement of his synod - the parliament of the Sydney diocese - only came after he and his inner circle took all the big decisions. Only one Australian bishop outside the Sydney diocese is joining the boycott. The other 40 or so may not like what happened in New Hampshire but they don't see it as a reason to turn their backs on the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Perhaps it's the hair, perhaps it's the smile, but Peter Jensen bears an uncanny resemblance to Kevin Rudd. The two have something of the same manner: powerful men who present themselves as patient explainers. The archbishop believes all mysteries can be explained in big, clear paragraphs. "I just keep going," he says with self-deprecating grace and then smiles his broad, man-to-man smile. Jensen's smile is one of the familiar sights of Sydney on posters, on websites, in brochures, in newspapers, wherever his church is offering a new life through Jesus Christ. A good smile is an asset in this business.
He is formidable and feared, but comes without a trace of episcopal glamour. The voice is plain. So are the clothes. He seems absolutely content that the role of the Archbishop of Sydney and Metropolitan of NSW is performed by a plain man. But not dull. Jensen goes where other church leaders fear to tread and is not afraid to tempt ridicule in the pursuit of Truth. His Easter message this year was devoted to ghosts, spirits and the dangers of Christians meddling with the occult. "One of the gravest weaknesses of contemporary Christianity," he declared a few weeks later, "is the little attention paid to the wrath of God."
Nearly 50 years have passed since Billy Graham swept 15-year-old Peter Jensen off his feet. After all this time it's hard to imagine the excitement of Graham's 1959 crusade through Australia. The North Carolina Baptist with a picture-perfect family and Charlton Heston good looks filled the press, the sports grounds and then the churches with his dramatic message: "The Bible says we are sick - sick with pride, sick with lust, sick with greed, sick with selfishness, sick with materialism, sick with secularism. We are sick, sick, sick!"
Young Peter went back to hear this 17 or 18 times. Graham's phrase, "The Bible says", made him sit up and think. "I already believed the Bible was the word of God. His appeal to the Bible as his authority meant he wasn't speaking out of his own head but he was explaining the Bible to us ... It had a big impact on me."
After failing first-year law a couple of times -and working in an office with the young John Howard, whom he found decent, helpful and "always political" - Jensen switched to theology at Moore College. This Anglican institution, which nestles beside, but is not a part of, Sydney University, proved his ladder to success. After studies in the UK, he lectured here, then ran the place for more than 15 years before becoming Archbishop of Sydney in 2001.
Jensen's headquarters is now a large room on the second floor of an office block behind St Andrew's Cathedral. The foyer has the feel of a moderately profitable Scandinavian shipping line, but the archbishop's office is astonishingly bare. Vast distances separate odd bits of furniture. A framed montage of protestant worthies is the only clue that this is the workplace of a church leader. Jensen claims to prefer a couple of English prints of ducks paddling about in bulrushes. He may be joking.
"I am responsible for the Anglicans in the boundaries of the diocese of Sydney," he says but he flatly denies there's a binding Anglican tradition that bishops stick to their own patch. "Every bishop in the Anglican Church has an interest, of course, in what goes on elsewhere. Most of us have many connections with people elsewhere ... Sometimes those ministries will jump over boundaries." Nothing has earned Jensen so much ire in the Australian church as the Sydney strategy of jumping boundaries to "plant" congregations of "Bible-believers" in surrounding Anglican territory.
He, on the other hand, patrols his own boundaries vigorously. Women priests are forbidden. Single men can't expect to be given a parish and no openly gay priest will find employment in the diocese. Visiting Anglican luminaries with uncomfortable views are not allowed to preach. Gene Robinson was in Sydney late last year for a private visit that went unnoticed by the press. He did not ask for permission to preach or celebrate communion. He knew it wouldn't be allowed. He didn't meet Jensen.
The North American troubles began only a year after Jensen took office in 2001 in an election where his own emphatic views on homosexuality had proved an asset. The following June, he condemned a diocese of the Canadian church that voted to bless same-sex unions. The following May, Jensen and Akinola threatened schism over English plans - already endorsed by Downing Street and Buckingham Palace - to make a celibate gay man bishop of Reading. That plan collapsed the same week the American church voted - 65 dioceses for, 31 against and 12 divided - to endorse Robinson's consecration.
From his medieval palace in London, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, tried to keep the peace. Bishops were called to emergency meetings in exotic locales. There were reports, pleas, faction deals and communiques but the brawl kept gathering momentum. Parishes in North America began to seek "oversight" from Anglican bishops in Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya and Nigeria - and the first court battles over property began.
What this is really all about is a matter of endless debate. "This dispute is not really about homosexuality," claims Jensen. "It's really about authority and who runs the church. And fairly clearly, to most of the rest of us, God runs the church through the Bible." Others stand back from the fracas and contend it's really about power. But analysts like Jim Naughton, the director of communications for the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, DC, argue this crisis is clearly about homosexuality and "the visceral fear" it engenders. "Absent that match, and the tinder does not catch fire."
In 2005, jensen was at the red sea meeting of prelates that formalised the Global South alliance under the leadership of Peter Akinola. This Nigerian leader with a taste for fiery rhetoric, spectacular vestments and dynamic political intervention headed an alliance of Anglican churches spanning South America, Africa, the Middle East and South-East Asia - with the diocese of Sydney as a sympathetic First World supporter. The following year The New Yorker called Akinola "possibly the most powerful figure in Anglicanism" and Time declared him one of the 100 leading figures shaping the world.
His is part of a great African success story for Christianity. A carpenter and peddler of patent medicines before he saw the light, Akinola studied for a time in America before returning in the early 1980s to begin an astonishing 2 1/2 decades of evangelism that saw him build - in head-to-head competition with Islam - a church with 20 million believers, more than 90 bishops, a hunger for growth and access to serious wealth. Sub-Saharan Africa contains more than half of all "active" Anglicans on a continent where there are now so many Christians that the centre of gravity of the world's faith is said to be Timbuktu.
Across that swathe of Africa, homosexuality remains taboo. In northern Nigeria where Sharia law prevails, homosexuals are stoned to death.
In the rest of the country they face 14 years in prison, to which Akinola would like to add another five years for belonging to gay organisations, advocating gay marriage or watching gay movies. "Homosexuality seeks to destroy marriage as we know it," he told The Christian Science Monitor last year. "When God created man, he saw man was alone and added a female mate for him. Why didn't he pick one of the baboons, one of the lions to make his partner...?"
Jensen has distanced himself once or twice from Akinola's abuse, but he has no theological quarrel with the man. The Sydney archbishop commends those Global South Christians who stand shoulder to shoulder with Islam in absolute hostility to homosexuality. He seems happy for Islam to call the shots for Anglicans worldwide - in order to speed evangelism and save Christians in Africa and South-East Asia from being "denounced and traduced and vilified because of the action of the North Americans ... It could be that the Americans may have been less up-front about all of this if they had thought about the impact on worldwide Christianity."
Moore college is eating its corner of Sydney street by street. Shops, a pub, rows of terraces and an old office block have all been consumed over the past 40 or 50 years as the college flexed its muscles and grew. This is Jensen's old stamping ground, the powerhouse of Sydney Anglicanism and guardian of its teachings. By arrangement with the archbishop I turned up there on a wintry afternoon to be briefed by its principal, Dr John Woodhouse, a hard man with a good mind who for many years ran a huge parish on Sydney's North Shore.
My question: what exactly is the Sydney Anglican line on homosexuality? Woodhouse had much to say on the plus side about the forgiveness available through Jesus Christ, but his list of minuses was long: homosexuals who persist in having sex are wicked sinners breaking God's law; they are unfit to take Holy Communion; unfit for any post in the parish; unfit for employment by the church; unfit for ministry; unfit to be elected bishop of anywhere; and unless they refrain from sex with one another for their entire lives, destined for Judgement.
These theologians find science interesting but irrelevant in the end to the moral issues at hand. Woodhouse will neither confirm nor deny the scientists' notion that homosexuals are what they are and can't be changed. The Sydney church funds an outfit called Liberty Christian Ministries to help gays turn straight. They concede it's not for everyone, but those who can't switch face lifelong abstinence in line with Christ's ruling - rather hard to pin down in the Gospels - that sex can only ever be had inside heterosexual marriage. The formula is: "Chaste singleness and faithful marriage."
But having literally put the fear of God into everyone, young and old, Anglican leaders speak almost tenderly of the need to respect homosexuals and protect them from violence. Happiness does not seem to be part of the Woodhouse calculus, but Jensen argues that a return to "classic" heterosexual marriage for all who can manage it - and abstinence for the rest - will prove a recipe for happiness for all.
"The biblical teaching on sexuality, of which homosexuality is only a part, confronts Western civilisation more and more with a very different vision of what it is to be human," says Jensen. "I think what we're doing is testifying, in what may be an increasingly minority way, to a truth about human nature and a vision for human life which is different, which is very demanding - very demanding indeed - but which will prove to be in the end for the betterment of us all. But it will take a hundred years for it to be true."
Neither Woodhouse nor Jensen would accept any link between their preaching and the high levels of violence and extremely high levels of self-harm and suicide that young homosexuals experience in a society even as relaxed as ours. "If the churches were to fall silent, the same things would apply," suggests Jensen. "I believe it is likely there is a natural feeling that there is something wrong here - it may be a natural feeling that may need to be challenged and all sorts of other things - that leads young men and sometimes young women to have tremendous self-doubt, etcetera. This will occur, I think, in any case. And I think you think that, too."
But you give those ideas comfort?
"And the reason is, I believe, that the ideas are right: that is to say, there is something here that does call for a Christian response, namely to commit yourself to a life of chastity, which is a very hard thing. But I believe that is right and better for the human being."
Persuading an anglican bishop to stay away from Lambeth is like begging an athlete to boycott the Olympics. Lambeth is what being a prelate is all about. It's a once-every-decade time of prayer, plotting and worship in the spectacular setting of Canterbury Cathedral. The Queen holds a garden party. And when the communion is being rent in two by such a brawl as this, it would seem self-defeating to stay away - unless you want the worst to happen.
December 2007 saw Jensen in Nairobi working with Akinola and a dozen Global South bishops on plans for both Lambeth and GAFCON's invitation-only pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Alerted by press release, Christian leaders in the Middle East begged the bishops to stay away.
Bishop Suheil Dawani of Jerusalem told Jensen face to face that his flock found "issues of peace and dialogue between the different faith communities of the Holy Land were far more important at this time than issues of homosexuality". Jensen and Akinola rode over local objections, tweaked the rhetoric, scheduled a pre-pilgrimage caucus of GAFCON leaders over the border in Jordan, but stuck to plan.
Lambeth proved harder to enforce. Several Global South prelates broke ranks and let it be known they would be going to the shindig in Britain. Back home in Sydney, Jensen met resistance among his five assistant bishops. He concedes each was free in theory to sign or not, "but I think they would regard themselves as being bound by cabinet solidarity". One of them was given the task of drafting a letter to Rowan Williams that all would sign. They agonised over this all through January without reaching a resolution.
Williams had not invited Gene Robinson. This pleased the forces of Global South. But the same clergy had been highly displeased to find no invitations were being extended to the "missionary bishops" consecrated by Global South leaders over the past six or seven years to give episcopal oversight to the breakaway parishes in North America. Akinola took Williams' stand particularly amiss. In large part, the coming boycott is an act of solidarity with those excluded renegades.
Jensen is a cautious radical. though he operates with extraordinary freedom, he knows the Australian church sets limits to his autonomy. "I am a very law-abiding person," he says. "I have a great respect for the law and I want to keep it." Always in the background is the Special Tribunal of judges and bishops with power to sack an errant archbishop for "wilful violation" of the church's constitution. So Jensen's services on behalf of the schism must stay just this side of total breach.
He knows he can't take Sydney's riches off into a new communion. He also knows he has to be extremely careful before joining his African brothers in consecrating "missionary bishops" for breakaway parishes in North America. He doesn't rule out the possibility of one day taking this boundary-hopping step but adds, "That is something I'd have to take very careful advice on." He fires this warning shot across the bows of the local bishops: "Gene Robinson hasn't been consecrated in Australia. If that were to happen, there would be a further loosening of the ties."
This man has many enemies in the Australian church. His Billy Graham brand of Christianity repels them; his refusal to recognise women priests irritates them; church planting in rival dioceses enrages them. But no one has taken him on. "The trouble," observes one highly placed analyst of Jensen's career, "is that the great warriors of the past are old beasts now and no new generation of warriors has been blooded."
The Sydney bishops had still not made up their minds to boycott Lambeth after four weeks of "agonising and struggle" - the words of Jensen's media officer Russell Powell - when Akinola announced their decision for them in far-off Lagos, telling a press conference he was not going to Lambeth - and nor were the bishops of Uganda, Rwanda and Sydney.
Jensen scrambled. He rang the Archbishop of Canterbury's office to say the Sydney bishops were not coming. At some point the letter was signed and sent. Then Jensen made the decision public. But senior sources in the church say two bishops remain deeply troubled: "They were told to like it or lump it." My calls to those men were flick-passed to Jensen's office. Powell informed me that everyone, including Jensen, was upset not to be going. "But the bishops are gladly united in the decision that has been taken."
Jensen drove all these big decisions. Only when they were signed and sealed did he take them to the Standing Committee of his synod - the parliament of his diocese - where they were rubber-stamped by the clergy and laity. Was that the right way round? "Some would think it a failure of leadership to do it any other way," answers Powell. The Standing Committee gave its support and "thanks to God for the unreserved commitment to biblical teaching of the Archbishop and his Bishops".
Jensen speaks of the old Anglican Communion in the past tense. As far as he's concerned, it's finished. Lambeth can go on quarrelling about homosexuality, but the Archbishop of Sydney expects the subject will hardly be mentioned at GAFCON. That's in the past. It is, after all, a bond between them. "To my mind we are just living in a new age. We're in a different sort of organisation. Now it's exploring the possibilities of this different organisation that is now before us." All the way from Westminster Abbey comes the sound of Queen Elizabeth I spinning in her tomb.
June 10, 2008
The church I was ordained in is not the church I am in now --Peter Jensen
The Anglican Church faces a modern Great Schism, with gay-tolerant Christians on one side and radical "Bible-believers" on the other. And at the forefront of the hardliners is Australia's outspoken evangelist Peter Jensen.
Pilgrims to the mount of olives late this month may be startled to see a couple of hundred Anglican divines kitted out in purple toiling up the slope. Most of the faces will be black. Back home these men are princes of the church; their followers run into tens of millions. But somewhere among the bishops, dressed incongruously in civvies, will be the humble, smiling face of Peter Jensen, the Archbishop of Sydney.
What's afoot in Jerusalem is the destruction of the Anglican Communion, the worldwide church loosely aligned to the Archbishop of Canterbury. It spread with the empire and has so far survived, despite all its contradictions, for about 450 years, guided by the tart good sense of its founding monarch, Elizabeth I: "There is only one Jesus Christ and all the rest is a dispute over trifles."
The church has held together despite Charles Darwin, the bells-and-smells insurgents of Anglo-Catholicism, the collapse of the British Empire, the discovery of the pill, the arrival of divorce, women as priests and even women as bishops. But the gathering in Jerusalem is intent on "scattering" this communion of 75 million believers because the North American church has gone soft on homosexuality.
"The church I was ordained in is not the church I am in now," Peter Jensen declares with brisk resignation. He puts himself among the true "orthodox" Anglicans defending their faith against the temptation to drift with the times. The archbishop insists it's bigger than sex. "That is a presenting issue that has really opened up the whole chasm between those who will come to terms with their culture at the expense of Biblical authority and those who won't." He holds out no hope for the old worldwide church. "Unlike some other people, I believe this is permanent. I don't think the Americans will step back from that. Not for a moment."
Jensen is talking New Hampshire. In the ice- hockey stadium of the state's university, in the presence of more than 50 bishops, a massed choir, a band and about 3000 Anglican faithful, a gay man was consecrated bishop on November 2, 2003. Even the hardest hardliners don't pretend this was the first gay bishop in the history of Christendom, or even contemporary Anglicanism. The trouble this time is that everyone's in the know.
Gene Robinson had been a priest in the diocese for nearly 30 years. Mark Andrew, his partner of 16 years, was there at the ceremony. On instructions from the police, both wore bulletproof vests. But the event went off peacefully enough - except for one clergyman haranguing the assembly about the evils of anal sex, and a knot of demonstrators standing rink-side with placards that read: "Fag Church, Fag Gospel", "Thank God for September 11", and "AIDS is God's Curse".
Protests about Robinson's consecration had been rolling round the Anglican globe for months. Peter Akinola, the leader of 20 million Nigerian Christians and the moving force behind the Jerusalem pilgrimage, denounced Robinson's elevation as "a Satanic attack on God's Church". Anglican leaders across Africa, the Middle East and Asia gave the events in New Hampshire blistering notices. Jensen calls them "plain disobedience to the teaching of the Holy Scripture". For him, judgement doesn't come more implacable.
International rage over new hampshire came tinged with elation. The consecration of a gay man was seen from the first as an opportunity to be seized, a chance for "Bible-believing" Anglicans to build a new, purer church. That's the mission GAFCON - the Global Anglican Future Conference - will be pursuing in Jerusalem. "I'm not saying to the Americans: 'Pull your head in,' " says Jensen. "We said that five years ago, and that didn't work. They will do their thing. But if they do do that thing, then their freedom frees us as well."
High titles and fancy dress can confuse us into thinking Cardinal George Pell is the biggest figure Australia has on the ecclesiastical world stage. In fact, it's Peter Jensen. Pell is one of any number of conservatives in the ruling faction of the Catholic Church - and said to be rather out of favour, these days, with the Pope - but Peter Jensen is a decisive leader of a breakaway faith that claims to represent half the keen Anglicans on earth. In this cause, he has spent his energy, intelligence, prestige and an unknown amount of Sydney's money. The city's archbishops have been travellers in the past, but Jensen is a frequent flyer in the pursuit of schism, turning up wherever needed - Blackpool, Nairobi, the Red Sea and, later this month, Jerusalem.
But he does not represent Australia. Sydney is the oldest and richest diocese in the country. It's growing more strongly than any other in the land. But in many eyes it's hardly Anglican at all. Visitors from Melbourne worshipping in a Sydney parish might think they've wandered into a protestant chapel: where are the crosses and vestments? What's this demand that all believers be Born Again in Jesus Christ?
GAFCON is only step one. Most of the 200 or so bishops, after issuing a communique on the shape of the new "alternative communion", will return to their dioceses and boycott Lambeth, the Archbishop of Canterbury's meeting of all the Anglican bishops of the world, in July. Sydney's six bishops have decided not to sit down with the Americans.
"If you believe that the practice of homosexuality is sinful - such as to exclude a person from the kingdom of God - then these bishops are intolerable, false teachers," explained Phillip Jensen, brother of the archbishop and the fiery dean of Sydney's St Andrew's Cathedral. The younger Jensen called on the world's bishops, even those who have already accepted their invitations, to renege and stay away. "To reinforce your error of judgement by attending is to make the same mistake as Herod when he executed John the Baptist."
The archbishop is careful not to use the "split" word. It has terrible legal consequences. After New Hampshire, when some very wealthy US Anglican parishes split from their bishops to demonstrate their devotion to the Bible and their hostility to homosexuality, the courts told them they were free to go wherever God called them - but they had to leave their property behind. Jensen knows he can't take the immense wealth of the Sydney diocese into a new church. "I can't. I'm part of a constitution, which is virtually unchangeable, of the Australian church. I wouldn't want to. I love the church. It would be bad for Christianity, bad for the gospel."
The property is a set of golden fetters. "There couldn't possibly be a division in the sense of a legal division," says Jensen. He talks expansively instead of an old empire evolving, families scattering, ties loosening, but with friendship and regard somehow surviving. "I think there is going to be an evolution in the Anglican Communion. It has occurred. And what the Future Conference is going to work out is how to live best within that evolution. That's its business."
More bluntly, GAFCON is planning to collapse the church into a sort of Balkan confusion in which national branches turn their backs on each other, bishops dabble in one another's territory, and dingo fences cut across the landscape to keep "orthodox" Bible-believing, homosexual-denouncing Anglicans safe on one side of the wire, and "liberals" on the other. If the split comes, it will shatter national churches as well as the international communion. It will be particularly messy for Australia.
Who Jensen really represents in manoeuvring his diocese into the splitters' camp is far from clear. The endorsement of his synod - the parliament of the Sydney diocese - only came after he and his inner circle took all the big decisions. Only one Australian bishop outside the Sydney diocese is joining the boycott. The other 40 or so may not like what happened in New Hampshire but they don't see it as a reason to turn their backs on the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Perhaps it's the hair, perhaps it's the smile, but Peter Jensen bears an uncanny resemblance to Kevin Rudd. The two have something of the same manner: powerful men who present themselves as patient explainers. The archbishop believes all mysteries can be explained in big, clear paragraphs. "I just keep going," he says with self-deprecating grace and then smiles his broad, man-to-man smile. Jensen's smile is one of the familiar sights of Sydney on posters, on websites, in brochures, in newspapers, wherever his church is offering a new life through Jesus Christ. A good smile is an asset in this business.
He is formidable and feared, but comes without a trace of episcopal glamour. The voice is plain. So are the clothes. He seems absolutely content that the role of the Archbishop of Sydney and Metropolitan of NSW is performed by a plain man. But not dull. Jensen goes where other church leaders fear to tread and is not afraid to tempt ridicule in the pursuit of Truth. His Easter message this year was devoted to ghosts, spirits and the dangers of Christians meddling with the occult. "One of the gravest weaknesses of contemporary Christianity," he declared a few weeks later, "is the little attention paid to the wrath of God."
Nearly 50 years have passed since Billy Graham swept 15-year-old Peter Jensen off his feet. After all this time it's hard to imagine the excitement of Graham's 1959 crusade through Australia. The North Carolina Baptist with a picture-perfect family and Charlton Heston good looks filled the press, the sports grounds and then the churches with his dramatic message: "The Bible says we are sick - sick with pride, sick with lust, sick with greed, sick with selfishness, sick with materialism, sick with secularism. We are sick, sick, sick!"
Young Peter went back to hear this 17 or 18 times. Graham's phrase, "The Bible says", made him sit up and think. "I already believed the Bible was the word of God. His appeal to the Bible as his authority meant he wasn't speaking out of his own head but he was explaining the Bible to us ... It had a big impact on me."
After failing first-year law a couple of times -and working in an office with the young John Howard, whom he found decent, helpful and "always political" - Jensen switched to theology at Moore College. This Anglican institution, which nestles beside, but is not a part of, Sydney University, proved his ladder to success. After studies in the UK, he lectured here, then ran the place for more than 15 years before becoming Archbishop of Sydney in 2001.
Jensen's headquarters is now a large room on the second floor of an office block behind St Andrew's Cathedral. The foyer has the feel of a moderately profitable Scandinavian shipping line, but the archbishop's office is astonishingly bare. Vast distances separate odd bits of furniture. A framed montage of protestant worthies is the only clue that this is the workplace of a church leader. Jensen claims to prefer a couple of English prints of ducks paddling about in bulrushes. He may be joking.
"I am responsible for the Anglicans in the boundaries of the diocese of Sydney," he says but he flatly denies there's a binding Anglican tradition that bishops stick to their own patch. "Every bishop in the Anglican Church has an interest, of course, in what goes on elsewhere. Most of us have many connections with people elsewhere ... Sometimes those ministries will jump over boundaries." Nothing has earned Jensen so much ire in the Australian church as the Sydney strategy of jumping boundaries to "plant" congregations of "Bible-believers" in surrounding Anglican territory.
He, on the other hand, patrols his own boundaries vigorously. Women priests are forbidden. Single men can't expect to be given a parish and no openly gay priest will find employment in the diocese. Visiting Anglican luminaries with uncomfortable views are not allowed to preach. Gene Robinson was in Sydney late last year for a private visit that went unnoticed by the press. He did not ask for permission to preach or celebrate communion. He knew it wouldn't be allowed. He didn't meet Jensen.
The North American troubles began only a year after Jensen took office in 2001 in an election where his own emphatic views on homosexuality had proved an asset. The following June, he condemned a diocese of the Canadian church that voted to bless same-sex unions. The following May, Jensen and Akinola threatened schism over English plans - already endorsed by Downing Street and Buckingham Palace - to make a celibate gay man bishop of Reading. That plan collapsed the same week the American church voted - 65 dioceses for, 31 against and 12 divided - to endorse Robinson's consecration.
From his medieval palace in London, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, tried to keep the peace. Bishops were called to emergency meetings in exotic locales. There were reports, pleas, faction deals and communiques but the brawl kept gathering momentum. Parishes in North America began to seek "oversight" from Anglican bishops in Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya and Nigeria - and the first court battles over property began.
What this is really all about is a matter of endless debate. "This dispute is not really about homosexuality," claims Jensen. "It's really about authority and who runs the church. And fairly clearly, to most of the rest of us, God runs the church through the Bible." Others stand back from the fracas and contend it's really about power. But analysts like Jim Naughton, the director of communications for the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, DC, argue this crisis is clearly about homosexuality and "the visceral fear" it engenders. "Absent that match, and the tinder does not catch fire."
In 2005, jensen was at the red sea meeting of prelates that formalised the Global South alliance under the leadership of Peter Akinola. This Nigerian leader with a taste for fiery rhetoric, spectacular vestments and dynamic political intervention headed an alliance of Anglican churches spanning South America, Africa, the Middle East and South-East Asia - with the diocese of Sydney as a sympathetic First World supporter. The following year The New Yorker called Akinola "possibly the most powerful figure in Anglicanism" and Time declared him one of the 100 leading figures shaping the world.
His is part of a great African success story for Christianity. A carpenter and peddler of patent medicines before he saw the light, Akinola studied for a time in America before returning in the early 1980s to begin an astonishing 2 1/2 decades of evangelism that saw him build - in head-to-head competition with Islam - a church with 20 million believers, more than 90 bishops, a hunger for growth and access to serious wealth. Sub-Saharan Africa contains more than half of all "active" Anglicans on a continent where there are now so many Christians that the centre of gravity of the world's faith is said to be Timbuktu.
Across that swathe of Africa, homosexuality remains taboo. In northern Nigeria where Sharia law prevails, homosexuals are stoned to death.
In the rest of the country they face 14 years in prison, to which Akinola would like to add another five years for belonging to gay organisations, advocating gay marriage or watching gay movies. "Homosexuality seeks to destroy marriage as we know it," he told The Christian Science Monitor last year. "When God created man, he saw man was alone and added a female mate for him. Why didn't he pick one of the baboons, one of the lions to make his partner...?"
Jensen has distanced himself once or twice from Akinola's abuse, but he has no theological quarrel with the man. The Sydney archbishop commends those Global South Christians who stand shoulder to shoulder with Islam in absolute hostility to homosexuality. He seems happy for Islam to call the shots for Anglicans worldwide - in order to speed evangelism and save Christians in Africa and South-East Asia from being "denounced and traduced and vilified because of the action of the North Americans ... It could be that the Americans may have been less up-front about all of this if they had thought about the impact on worldwide Christianity."
Moore college is eating its corner of Sydney street by street. Shops, a pub, rows of terraces and an old office block have all been consumed over the past 40 or 50 years as the college flexed its muscles and grew. This is Jensen's old stamping ground, the powerhouse of Sydney Anglicanism and guardian of its teachings. By arrangement with the archbishop I turned up there on a wintry afternoon to be briefed by its principal, Dr John Woodhouse, a hard man with a good mind who for many years ran a huge parish on Sydney's North Shore.
My question: what exactly is the Sydney Anglican line on homosexuality? Woodhouse had much to say on the plus side about the forgiveness available through Jesus Christ, but his list of minuses was long: homosexuals who persist in having sex are wicked sinners breaking God's law; they are unfit to take Holy Communion; unfit for any post in the parish; unfit for employment by the church; unfit for ministry; unfit to be elected bishop of anywhere; and unless they refrain from sex with one another for their entire lives, destined for Judgement.
These theologians find science interesting but irrelevant in the end to the moral issues at hand. Woodhouse will neither confirm nor deny the scientists' notion that homosexuals are what they are and can't be changed. The Sydney church funds an outfit called Liberty Christian Ministries to help gays turn straight. They concede it's not for everyone, but those who can't switch face lifelong abstinence in line with Christ's ruling - rather hard to pin down in the Gospels - that sex can only ever be had inside heterosexual marriage. The formula is: "Chaste singleness and faithful marriage."
But having literally put the fear of God into everyone, young and old, Anglican leaders speak almost tenderly of the need to respect homosexuals and protect them from violence. Happiness does not seem to be part of the Woodhouse calculus, but Jensen argues that a return to "classic" heterosexual marriage for all who can manage it - and abstinence for the rest - will prove a recipe for happiness for all.
"The biblical teaching on sexuality, of which homosexuality is only a part, confronts Western civilisation more and more with a very different vision of what it is to be human," says Jensen. "I think what we're doing is testifying, in what may be an increasingly minority way, to a truth about human nature and a vision for human life which is different, which is very demanding - very demanding indeed - but which will prove to be in the end for the betterment of us all. But it will take a hundred years for it to be true."
Neither Woodhouse nor Jensen would accept any link between their preaching and the high levels of violence and extremely high levels of self-harm and suicide that young homosexuals experience in a society even as relaxed as ours. "If the churches were to fall silent, the same things would apply," suggests Jensen. "I believe it is likely there is a natural feeling that there is something wrong here - it may be a natural feeling that may need to be challenged and all sorts of other things - that leads young men and sometimes young women to have tremendous self-doubt, etcetera. This will occur, I think, in any case. And I think you think that, too."
But you give those ideas comfort?
"And the reason is, I believe, that the ideas are right: that is to say, there is something here that does call for a Christian response, namely to commit yourself to a life of chastity, which is a very hard thing. But I believe that is right and better for the human being."
Persuading an anglican bishop to stay away from Lambeth is like begging an athlete to boycott the Olympics. Lambeth is what being a prelate is all about. It's a once-every-decade time of prayer, plotting and worship in the spectacular setting of Canterbury Cathedral. The Queen holds a garden party. And when the communion is being rent in two by such a brawl as this, it would seem self-defeating to stay away - unless you want the worst to happen.
December 2007 saw Jensen in Nairobi working with Akinola and a dozen Global South bishops on plans for both Lambeth and GAFCON's invitation-only pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Alerted by press release, Christian leaders in the Middle East begged the bishops to stay away.
Bishop Suheil Dawani of Jerusalem told Jensen face to face that his flock found "issues of peace and dialogue between the different faith communities of the Holy Land were far more important at this time than issues of homosexuality". Jensen and Akinola rode over local objections, tweaked the rhetoric, scheduled a pre-pilgrimage caucus of GAFCON leaders over the border in Jordan, but stuck to plan.
Lambeth proved harder to enforce. Several Global South prelates broke ranks and let it be known they would be going to the shindig in Britain. Back home in Sydney, Jensen met resistance among his five assistant bishops. He concedes each was free in theory to sign or not, "but I think they would regard themselves as being bound by cabinet solidarity". One of them was given the task of drafting a letter to Rowan Williams that all would sign. They agonised over this all through January without reaching a resolution.
Williams had not invited Gene Robinson. This pleased the forces of Global South. But the same clergy had been highly displeased to find no invitations were being extended to the "missionary bishops" consecrated by Global South leaders over the past six or seven years to give episcopal oversight to the breakaway parishes in North America. Akinola took Williams' stand particularly amiss. In large part, the coming boycott is an act of solidarity with those excluded renegades.
Jensen is a cautious radical. though he operates with extraordinary freedom, he knows the Australian church sets limits to his autonomy. "I am a very law-abiding person," he says. "I have a great respect for the law and I want to keep it." Always in the background is the Special Tribunal of judges and bishops with power to sack an errant archbishop for "wilful violation" of the church's constitution. So Jensen's services on behalf of the schism must stay just this side of total breach.
He knows he can't take Sydney's riches off into a new communion. He also knows he has to be extremely careful before joining his African brothers in consecrating "missionary bishops" for breakaway parishes in North America. He doesn't rule out the possibility of one day taking this boundary-hopping step but adds, "That is something I'd have to take very careful advice on." He fires this warning shot across the bows of the local bishops: "Gene Robinson hasn't been consecrated in Australia. If that were to happen, there would be a further loosening of the ties."
This man has many enemies in the Australian church. His Billy Graham brand of Christianity repels them; his refusal to recognise women priests irritates them; church planting in rival dioceses enrages them. But no one has taken him on. "The trouble," observes one highly placed analyst of Jensen's career, "is that the great warriors of the past are old beasts now and no new generation of warriors has been blooded."
The Sydney bishops had still not made up their minds to boycott Lambeth after four weeks of "agonising and struggle" - the words of Jensen's media officer Russell Powell - when Akinola announced their decision for them in far-off Lagos, telling a press conference he was not going to Lambeth - and nor were the bishops of Uganda, Rwanda and Sydney.
Jensen scrambled. He rang the Archbishop of Canterbury's office to say the Sydney bishops were not coming. At some point the letter was signed and sent. Then Jensen made the decision public. But senior sources in the church say two bishops remain deeply troubled: "They were told to like it or lump it." My calls to those men were flick-passed to Jensen's office. Powell informed me that everyone, including Jensen, was upset not to be going. "But the bishops are gladly united in the decision that has been taken."
Jensen drove all these big decisions. Only when they were signed and sealed did he take them to the Standing Committee of his synod - the parliament of his diocese - where they were rubber-stamped by the clergy and laity. Was that the right way round? "Some would think it a failure of leadership to do it any other way," answers Powell. The Standing Committee gave its support and "thanks to God for the unreserved commitment to biblical teaching of the Archbishop and his Bishops".
Jensen speaks of the old Anglican Communion in the past tense. As far as he's concerned, it's finished. Lambeth can go on quarrelling about homosexuality, but the Archbishop of Sydney expects the subject will hardly be mentioned at GAFCON. That's in the past. It is, after all, a bond between them. "To my mind we are just living in a new age. We're in a different sort of organisation. Now it's exploring the possibilities of this different organisation that is now before us." All the way from Westminster Abbey comes the sound of Queen Elizabeth I spinning in her tomb.
Monday, June 9, 2008
Bishop Gene Robinson marries his Gay partner
Reuters
Gay bishop enters into civil union
By Jason Szep Mon Jun 9, 2:43 PM ET
BOSTON (Reuters) - The openly gay U.S. Episcopal bishop at the center of the Anglican church's global battle over homosexuality, has entered into a civil union with his longtime partner at a private ceremony.
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About 120 guests gathered at St. Paul's Church in New Hampshire for Saturday's ceremony for Bishop Gene Robinson and his partner of more than 19 years, Mark Andrew. The event was kept private out of respect for next month's worldwide Anglican conference, Robinson's spokesman, Mike Barwell, said on Sunday.
"It was absolutely joyful," Barwell said by telephone. "A lot of his supporters and friends were there, including many members of the gay and lesbian community."
The 77 million-member Anglican Communion, a global federation of national churches, has been in upheaval since 2003 when the Episcopal Church consecrated Robinson as the first bishop known to be in an openly homosexual relationship in more than four centuries of church history.
The Episcopal Church is the U.S. branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion.
Disputes over scriptural authority, the blessing of gay unions and other matters have become a worldwide issue and threaten turmoil this summer when Anglicans gather for their once-a-decade Lambeth Conference in Britain.
Robinson has in the past received death threats and wore a bulletproof vest under his vestments at his consecration in 2003. Two uniformed police officers stood guard at Saturday's ceremony in the state capital Concord, said Barwell.
Robinson and Andrew held two ceremonies -- a non-religious one in which they became legal partners followed by a formal church service to give blessings to God for their relationship.
Robinson, 61, a divorced father of two, praised New Hampshire's lawmakers when they passed legislation last year to make the state the fourth in the country where same-sex civil unions are legal. The law took effect January 1.
Robinson has suggested states go further and follow Massachusetts, which in 2003 became the first U.S. state to legalize gay marriage.
Robinson has said he wanted to enter into the civil union before leaving for England to ensure Andrew and his two daughters had legal protections given the threats to his life.
Civil unions grant largely the same state rights as married couples -- from insurance coverage to tax benefits and hospital visiting rights -- but lack the full, federal legal protections of marriage.
Robinson has been excluded from the Anglican Communion's Lambeth Conference but plans to attend as an outside observer.
(Editing by Bill Trott)
Gay bishop enters into civil union
By Jason Szep Mon Jun 9, 2:43 PM ET
BOSTON (Reuters) - The openly gay U.S. Episcopal bishop at the center of the Anglican church's global battle over homosexuality, has entered into a civil union with his longtime partner at a private ceremony.
ADVERTISEMENT
click here
About 120 guests gathered at St. Paul's Church in New Hampshire for Saturday's ceremony for Bishop Gene Robinson and his partner of more than 19 years, Mark Andrew. The event was kept private out of respect for next month's worldwide Anglican conference, Robinson's spokesman, Mike Barwell, said on Sunday.
"It was absolutely joyful," Barwell said by telephone. "A lot of his supporters and friends were there, including many members of the gay and lesbian community."
The 77 million-member Anglican Communion, a global federation of national churches, has been in upheaval since 2003 when the Episcopal Church consecrated Robinson as the first bishop known to be in an openly homosexual relationship in more than four centuries of church history.
The Episcopal Church is the U.S. branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion.
Disputes over scriptural authority, the blessing of gay unions and other matters have become a worldwide issue and threaten turmoil this summer when Anglicans gather for their once-a-decade Lambeth Conference in Britain.
Robinson has in the past received death threats and wore a bulletproof vest under his vestments at his consecration in 2003. Two uniformed police officers stood guard at Saturday's ceremony in the state capital Concord, said Barwell.
Robinson and Andrew held two ceremonies -- a non-religious one in which they became legal partners followed by a formal church service to give blessings to God for their relationship.
Robinson, 61, a divorced father of two, praised New Hampshire's lawmakers when they passed legislation last year to make the state the fourth in the country where same-sex civil unions are legal. The law took effect January 1.
Robinson has suggested states go further and follow Massachusetts, which in 2003 became the first U.S. state to legalize gay marriage.
Robinson has said he wanted to enter into the civil union before leaving for England to ensure Andrew and his two daughters had legal protections given the threats to his life.
Civil unions grant largely the same state rights as married couples -- from insurance coverage to tax benefits and hospital visiting rights -- but lack the full, federal legal protections of marriage.
Robinson has been excluded from the Anglican Communion's Lambeth Conference but plans to attend as an outside observer.
(Editing by Bill Trott)
Friday, June 6, 2008
Habiba Kouide Crime of practising a non-Muslim religion without authorisation
Church in the World
7 June 2008
Algeria
Archbishop seeks clemency in trial of convert
Tom Heneghan
THE RETIRING Archbishop of Algiers is urging the Algerian authorities to drop charges against a convert to Christianity following the suspension of her trial in the city of Tiaret last week, writes Tom Heneghan.
Demanding more information from the prosecution, the judge in the case of Protestant evangelical Habiba Kouider, charged with possessing unauthorised Bibles, suspended the trial, one of several the Muslim country is bringing against evangelical Protestants. The prosecution wants a three-year sentence for her under a 2006 law banning "practising a non-Muslim religion without authorisation".
In another trial in Tiaret, four converts received suspended jail sentences of between two and six months and fines of up to £1,500 on Tuesday for holding illegal religious services in a private home. In February a Catholic priest received a one-year suspended jail sentence for celebrating Mass in an unregistered location (The Tablet, 23 February).
Evangelicals and Catholics alike fear the Government is using the law to clamp down against Christians, provoking Archbishop Henri Teissier to voice his plea in an interview with the Algerian daily El Khabar. "I hope Habiba Kouider will be released since the judge in the case has expressed a different opinion from that of the prosecutor," said the archbishop. He also sought to emphasise that the Catholic Church does not proselytise in Algeria by saying, "It does not match our view of relations between Christians and Muslims."
Last weekend, the head of the official Higher Islamic Council accused evangelicals of trying to undermine Algeria with foreign help. "This is a new form of colonisation that is hidden behind freedom of worship," said council head Abu Amrane Chikh. Officials say there are about 10,000 Christians in the country of 33 million.
France's Minister for Human Rights, Rama Yade, a Muslim of Senegalese descent, has also urged clemency for the converts, saying: "Christianity does not threaten Islam in Algeria." Her comments were later criticised in the pro-Government press.
The Vatican announced on 28 May that Archbishop Teissier will be replaced by Ghaleb Moussa Abdalla Bader from Jordan, the first Arab to be made a bishop in Algeria. Bishop Claude Rault of Laghouat, in southern Algeria, told the Paris Catholic daily La Croix: "The Church in Algeria has long been oriented along a North-South axis. The opportunity and the hope of this nomination is that it will look more towards the Middle East."
7 June 2008
Algeria
Archbishop seeks clemency in trial of convert
Tom Heneghan
THE RETIRING Archbishop of Algiers is urging the Algerian authorities to drop charges against a convert to Christianity following the suspension of her trial in the city of Tiaret last week, writes Tom Heneghan.
Demanding more information from the prosecution, the judge in the case of Protestant evangelical Habiba Kouider, charged with possessing unauthorised Bibles, suspended the trial, one of several the Muslim country is bringing against evangelical Protestants. The prosecution wants a three-year sentence for her under a 2006 law banning "practising a non-Muslim religion without authorisation".
In another trial in Tiaret, four converts received suspended jail sentences of between two and six months and fines of up to £1,500 on Tuesday for holding illegal religious services in a private home. In February a Catholic priest received a one-year suspended jail sentence for celebrating Mass in an unregistered location (The Tablet, 23 February).
Evangelicals and Catholics alike fear the Government is using the law to clamp down against Christians, provoking Archbishop Henri Teissier to voice his plea in an interview with the Algerian daily El Khabar. "I hope Habiba Kouider will be released since the judge in the case has expressed a different opinion from that of the prosecutor," said the archbishop. He also sought to emphasise that the Catholic Church does not proselytise in Algeria by saying, "It does not match our view of relations between Christians and Muslims."
Last weekend, the head of the official Higher Islamic Council accused evangelicals of trying to undermine Algeria with foreign help. "This is a new form of colonisation that is hidden behind freedom of worship," said council head Abu Amrane Chikh. Officials say there are about 10,000 Christians in the country of 33 million.
France's Minister for Human Rights, Rama Yade, a Muslim of Senegalese descent, has also urged clemency for the converts, saying: "Christianity does not threaten Islam in Algeria." Her comments were later criticised in the pro-Government press.
The Vatican announced on 28 May that Archbishop Teissier will be replaced by Ghaleb Moussa Abdalla Bader from Jordan, the first Arab to be made a bishop in Algeria. Bishop Claude Rault of Laghouat, in southern Algeria, told the Paris Catholic daily La Croix: "The Church in Algeria has long been oriented along a North-South axis. The opportunity and the hope of this nomination is that it will look more towards the Middle East."
Pope addresses FAO Summit Rome 2008
Church in the World
7 June 2008
Pope tells world leaders hunger is ‘unacceptable’ in time of plenty
Robert Mickens
POPE BENEDICT XVI reminded international leaders gathered in Rome this week for a United Nations-sponsored food summit that hunger and malnutrition were "unacceptable" in a world equipped with plentiful resources and technical know-how.
The Pope's message - read by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone - was one of three keynote addresses to open the three-day meeting on Tuesday at the headquarters of the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) near the Circus Maximus. Some 40 heads of state or government participated in the talks, aimed at long-range global food security in the light of differing views on climate change and bioenergy.
But controversy and tight security swirled around the event. The presence of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, both considered international pariahs, cast a pall over the summit. Both leaders were intentionally left on the sidelines by Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, who held special dinners and receptions for other dignitaries.
However, the Pope did not meet any of the visiting leaders, despite a request from Mr Ahmadinejad for an audience. The Vatican said that the Pope was "disappointed", but the "number of requests, limited time available and previous commitments" made any meetings impossible. The Iranian leader, who repeated anti-Israel remarks, was met by at least three protests during his one-day stay in Rome.
One of the immediate goals of the FAO summit was to counter rising grain and rice costs and take concrete action to help feed some 862 million people suffering from chronic hunger - most of them in Africa. The FAO's director general, Jacques Diouf, said the international community would have to come up with US$30 billion (around £15.3bn) a year to eradicate the scourge of hunger.
In his message Pope Benedict called for "new strategies" to fight poverty and promote rural development. However, he said it would not be "possible to adopt courageous measures" unless "respect for human dignity was brought to bear at the negotiating table". Quoting a famous line of the twelfth-century Gratian's Decretum, which is also cited in the Vatican II constitution, Gaudium et Spes, the Pope warned: "Feed the person dying of hunger, because if you do not feed him you are killing him."
The UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, told the assembly that food production had to increase 50 per cent by 2030 in order to feed all the world's people. Some 270, mostly Catholic, faith-based groups - including more than 30 NGOs with consultative status at the UN - sent a strong message to the summit's participants, saying that "climate change, concern for future energy supplies, an unprecedented rise in the price of cereals" demanded urgent action.
"As people of faith, we recognise the moral imperative without exception to change our lifestyle in keeping with the carrying capacity of the Earth and the protection of its climate," the four-page text said. The groups called for sustainable agricultural and rural development. "Both farmers and consumers need to be educated to value nature's intrinsic worth as gift of God, rather than to consider her a ‘resource to be exploited'," said the groups, among which were Caritas Internationalis, Pax Christi International, Franciscans International, the International Catholic Rural Association, the Union of Superiors General, and around 135 religious orders.
7 June 2008
Pope tells world leaders hunger is ‘unacceptable’ in time of plenty
Robert Mickens
POPE BENEDICT XVI reminded international leaders gathered in Rome this week for a United Nations-sponsored food summit that hunger and malnutrition were "unacceptable" in a world equipped with plentiful resources and technical know-how.
The Pope's message - read by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone - was one of three keynote addresses to open the three-day meeting on Tuesday at the headquarters of the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) near the Circus Maximus. Some 40 heads of state or government participated in the talks, aimed at long-range global food security in the light of differing views on climate change and bioenergy.
But controversy and tight security swirled around the event. The presence of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, both considered international pariahs, cast a pall over the summit. Both leaders were intentionally left on the sidelines by Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, who held special dinners and receptions for other dignitaries.
However, the Pope did not meet any of the visiting leaders, despite a request from Mr Ahmadinejad for an audience. The Vatican said that the Pope was "disappointed", but the "number of requests, limited time available and previous commitments" made any meetings impossible. The Iranian leader, who repeated anti-Israel remarks, was met by at least three protests during his one-day stay in Rome.
One of the immediate goals of the FAO summit was to counter rising grain and rice costs and take concrete action to help feed some 862 million people suffering from chronic hunger - most of them in Africa. The FAO's director general, Jacques Diouf, said the international community would have to come up with US$30 billion (around £15.3bn) a year to eradicate the scourge of hunger.
In his message Pope Benedict called for "new strategies" to fight poverty and promote rural development. However, he said it would not be "possible to adopt courageous measures" unless "respect for human dignity was brought to bear at the negotiating table". Quoting a famous line of the twelfth-century Gratian's Decretum, which is also cited in the Vatican II constitution, Gaudium et Spes, the Pope warned: "Feed the person dying of hunger, because if you do not feed him you are killing him."
The UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, told the assembly that food production had to increase 50 per cent by 2030 in order to feed all the world's people. Some 270, mostly Catholic, faith-based groups - including more than 30 NGOs with consultative status at the UN - sent a strong message to the summit's participants, saying that "climate change, concern for future energy supplies, an unprecedented rise in the price of cereals" demanded urgent action.
"As people of faith, we recognise the moral imperative without exception to change our lifestyle in keeping with the carrying capacity of the Earth and the protection of its climate," the four-page text said. The groups called for sustainable agricultural and rural development. "Both farmers and consumers need to be educated to value nature's intrinsic worth as gift of God, rather than to consider her a ‘resource to be exploited'," said the groups, among which were Caritas Internationalis, Pax Christi International, Franciscans International, the International Catholic Rural Association, the Union of Superiors General, and around 135 religious orders.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
The Apostles - Pope Benedict XVI (2007) Reviewd by Martha L. Rogers
GoddeWords] Book Review: The Apostles - Pope Benedict XVI (2007)
Q Bee to Mirlo, GoddeWords
http://www.amazon.com/review/product/1592764053/
ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt_sr_1?%5Fencoding=UTF8&filterBy=addOneStar
Reviewed by Martha L. Rogers, PhD.
This book is well-written but its title is deceptive. The early
chapters front-load what follows with the theological premises of the
Roman Catholic Church so it is less about the Apostles than we might
hope. BXVI is known as a scholar, and certainly his scholarly bent
shows in what he writes, leaving many people who haven't personally dug
into the current scholarship feeling impressed. If one believes in
apostolic succession and Christ's entrusting the apostles with
maintaining fidelity and truth (and this reviewer does accept this
concept), then there are those of us who feel that the mandate for
truth has failed. I have to assume that the Bishop of Rome believes
what he has written, but the world has changed in that the world of
scholarship is open to those of us in the pews. We don't have to accept
a distorted and incomplete scholarship. We're no longer illiterates who
are dependent upon the Church to tell us what to believe. We can dig it
out and weigh its efficacy for ourselves. It cannot be that the Bishop
of Rome is unaware of the extensive scholarship, as he has the
unfathomable riches of the Roman Catholic Church that would make it
easy.
I will only briefly address two overwhelmingly glaring areas. We note
that women disciples are discussed in the very back of the book. BXVI
lists many of the women, but he is only able to magnify the works of
those who are coupled, such as Priscilla and Aquila. He makes no note
of the importance that in scripture, Priscilla is listed first. And he
manages to get through chapters on St. Paul's co-workers and the
chapter on women without mentioning the Apostle Junia (Romans 16:7).
The scholarship here is clear: There was one named female Apostle. See
Eldon Jay Epp (2005). Junia: The First Woman Apostle. Minneapolis:
Fortress Press (available on Amazon).
Then, the gospel material on St. Peter is, as would be expected,
seriously selective, reinterpreted and reworked. What is lost is that
the meaning of "Apostle" was being fought in the first century, and we
know who won out in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. Luke carves out a view
that the 12 are the only trustworthy witnesses of the Resurrection.
Luke's "twelve" is a select group and it is ONLY in Luke they are
specifically chosen FROM a larger group of followers, a group not
present in Mark and Matthew [see Luke 6:13]. Matthew uses the term,
"apostolic" only once [10:2-5]. Mark uses it only once [6:30]. Luke
uses the term 6 times in the Gospel, and 34 times in Luke-Acts. The
author of Luke and Acts writes several decades after Paul and adds new
requirements for apostleship, limiting it to the Twelve, excluding
Paul, James the brother of Jesus, who rose to head the Jerusalem
Church, and all female apostles. The restriction of "Apostle" seen in
Luke-Acts is not seen in Paul. Luke downplays the functionality of the
role or mission of Apostleship and makes it more symbolic.
The preeminence of Peter is not uniform across the Gospels so we can
see the struggle for authority that was going on. In 4G, Jesus never
specifically chooses Peter as a member of a subgroup of disciples. He
does not have any special resurrection appearance until Chapter 21,
which is a later add-on redaction.
Contrary to BXVI, Peter is not depicted as the first to see the Risen
Christ across the Gospels. Matthew, Mark and John give prominence to
Mary Magdalene. It is only in Luke that Peter is gifted with an
individual appearance of the Lord [Luke 24:33-34]. In the other three
Gospels, Jesus or angelic messengers send Mary Magdalene alone or with
other women to proclaim the Resurrection. This is such an inconvenience
to Rome that it must be obscured. So, at a minimum, the history as
recounted in the canonical Gospels shows that the conflict for
authority was going on in the 1st century.
If you want to see some of the available scholarship for yourself, read
Ann Graham Brock (2003). Mary Magdalene, The First Apostle: The
Struggle for Authority. Harvard University Press (available on Amazon).
Based on her PhD dissertation at Harvard, she has very effectively
demonstrated in the canonical Gospels, with supplementary non-canonical
sources including the Acts of Peter and Acts of Paul, that where Peter
is made prominent in the Gospels, Mary Magdalene and the other women
are diminished, and vice versa.
The Apostles reads easily if you accept the underlying premises, and if
you don't, the book well captures official Roman Catholic views. It is
not an unbiased account of the early history of the church. There is
good information in this book, but it should not be read in isolation
or as an accurate picture of the first century of Christianity.
Q Bee to Mirlo, GoddeWords
http://www.amazon.com/review/product/1592764053/
ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt_sr_1?%5Fencoding=UTF8&filterBy=addOneStar
Reviewed by Martha L. Rogers, PhD.
This book is well-written but its title is deceptive. The early
chapters front-load what follows with the theological premises of the
Roman Catholic Church so it is less about the Apostles than we might
hope. BXVI is known as a scholar, and certainly his scholarly bent
shows in what he writes, leaving many people who haven't personally dug
into the current scholarship feeling impressed. If one believes in
apostolic succession and Christ's entrusting the apostles with
maintaining fidelity and truth (and this reviewer does accept this
concept), then there are those of us who feel that the mandate for
truth has failed. I have to assume that the Bishop of Rome believes
what he has written, but the world has changed in that the world of
scholarship is open to those of us in the pews. We don't have to accept
a distorted and incomplete scholarship. We're no longer illiterates who
are dependent upon the Church to tell us what to believe. We can dig it
out and weigh its efficacy for ourselves. It cannot be that the Bishop
of Rome is unaware of the extensive scholarship, as he has the
unfathomable riches of the Roman Catholic Church that would make it
easy.
I will only briefly address two overwhelmingly glaring areas. We note
that women disciples are discussed in the very back of the book. BXVI
lists many of the women, but he is only able to magnify the works of
those who are coupled, such as Priscilla and Aquila. He makes no note
of the importance that in scripture, Priscilla is listed first. And he
manages to get through chapters on St. Paul's co-workers and the
chapter on women without mentioning the Apostle Junia (Romans 16:7).
The scholarship here is clear: There was one named female Apostle. See
Eldon Jay Epp (2005). Junia: The First Woman Apostle. Minneapolis:
Fortress Press (available on Amazon).
Then, the gospel material on St. Peter is, as would be expected,
seriously selective, reinterpreted and reworked. What is lost is that
the meaning of "Apostle" was being fought in the first century, and we
know who won out in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. Luke carves out a view
that the 12 are the only trustworthy witnesses of the Resurrection.
Luke's "twelve" is a select group and it is ONLY in Luke they are
specifically chosen FROM a larger group of followers, a group not
present in Mark and Matthew [see Luke 6:13]. Matthew uses the term,
"apostolic" only once [10:2-5]. Mark uses it only once [6:30]. Luke
uses the term 6 times in the Gospel, and 34 times in Luke-Acts. The
author of Luke and Acts writes several decades after Paul and adds new
requirements for apostleship, limiting it to the Twelve, excluding
Paul, James the brother of Jesus, who rose to head the Jerusalem
Church, and all female apostles. The restriction of "Apostle" seen in
Luke-Acts is not seen in Paul. Luke downplays the functionality of the
role or mission of Apostleship and makes it more symbolic.
The preeminence of Peter is not uniform across the Gospels so we can
see the struggle for authority that was going on. In 4G, Jesus never
specifically chooses Peter as a member of a subgroup of disciples. He
does not have any special resurrection appearance until Chapter 21,
which is a later add-on redaction.
Contrary to BXVI, Peter is not depicted as the first to see the Risen
Christ across the Gospels. Matthew, Mark and John give prominence to
Mary Magdalene. It is only in Luke that Peter is gifted with an
individual appearance of the Lord [Luke 24:33-34]. In the other three
Gospels, Jesus or angelic messengers send Mary Magdalene alone or with
other women to proclaim the Resurrection. This is such an inconvenience
to Rome that it must be obscured. So, at a minimum, the history as
recounted in the canonical Gospels shows that the conflict for
authority was going on in the 1st century.
If you want to see some of the available scholarship for yourself, read
Ann Graham Brock (2003). Mary Magdalene, The First Apostle: The
Struggle for Authority. Harvard University Press (available on Amazon).
Based on her PhD dissertation at Harvard, she has very effectively
demonstrated in the canonical Gospels, with supplementary non-canonical
sources including the Acts of Peter and Acts of Paul, that where Peter
is made prominent in the Gospels, Mary Magdalene and the other women
are diminished, and vice versa.
The Apostles reads easily if you accept the underlying premises, and if
you don't, the book well captures official Roman Catholic views. It is
not an unbiased account of the early history of the church. There is
good information in this book, but it should not be read in isolation
or as an accurate picture of the first century of Christianity.
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