Bishop Smith and Laura will be traveling to the Lambeth Conference in Canterbury England from July 10 to August 4, 2008. This blog has been created to communicate with the folks back home in the Diocese of Arizona about what is happening day to day at the Conference.
Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria has been denied entry to Jordan. This is an embarrassing beginning to the GAFCON conference of conservative Anglicans who now plan to leave Jordan for Jerusalem three days early. Readers of the Café will remember that Akinola, a fierce critic of Islam, has refused to answer questions about his knowledge of a retributive massacre of some 700 Muslim in the town of Yelwa in northern Nigeria in 2004.
In Zimbabwe today falsehood has almost become a national disease. Some newspapers and electronic media thrive on spreading falsehoods. They twist the truth for falsehood. All forms of persecution – torture, killings, arrests are done by those for whom falsehood has become a doctrine that keeps them to sustain their status quo…
The Archbishop of Canterbury himself has rightly recognised that celibacy is a vocation to which many gay people are simply not called. Which is why, it strikes me, the church ought to be offering gay people a basis for monogamous relationships that are permanent, faithful and stable.
The Rev. Dr. Giles Fraser
‘You describe the result as “familiar words reordered and reconfigured carrying new meanings.” I note that the order of service, which I have now received, includes the phrase “With this ring I thee bind, with my body I thee worship”. At first sight this seems to break the House of Bishops Guidelines….’
I come via a tradition where the layperson could do anything that the clergyperson did, and indeed they stopped ordaining clerics as a matter of course. I continue to see no reason why lay people properly prepared cannot do all the functions of a clergyperson. This might join my radical liberalism with Sydney fundamentalism, but there we are.
The word “friend” recurs frequently in the story of Bernard Mizeki’s life, ministry, and martyrdom. Fleeing oppression in Portuguese East Africa, Mizeki was befriended by Anglican missionaries and became a Christian. He, in turn, befriended the people of Central Africa, and they likewise came to Christianity.