In his response to the GAFCON statement. Dr. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury urges his readers to accept the good faith of bishops wo have begun attempting to colonize other churches. Given their track record, this is difficult to do.
The Feast of St. Benedict falls every year on the 11th of July, exactly a week after the 4th of July, our Independence Day. In some ways, one could make the case that these two commemorations stand for opposite values. Independence Day is about shaking off tyrannical authority, for self-determination, for freedom. St. Benedict, on the other hand, stresses the dependence of the monk on his community, and the rootedness to be found in one place until death.
The 4th of July has been celebrated in Philadelphia in the manner I expected. The military men . . . ran away with all the glory of the day. Scarcely a word was said of the solicitude and labors and fears and sorrows and sleepless nights of the men who projected, proposed, defended, and subscribed the Declaration of Independence.
In the Episcopal Church’s Book of Common Prayer, July 4th is an appointed Feast Day, though in truth it’s probably not observed by Episcopalians who aren’t American citizens, or frankly, by most Episcopalians. But for those that are keeping this Feast Day, may it be a blessed one for you.
You can play along at home with the bishops of the Anglican Communion as they address the Church’s most daunting challenges by taking advantage of these resources.
Archbishop Thabo Makgoba of Cape Town today called on the Southern African Development Community to establish mechanisms in Zimbabwe to bring about an end to political violence. He also urged Zimbabwe’s ruling Zanu-PF to recognise the legitimacy of its political opponents. Read his statement.
When I look to the Gospels, I find significant support for what is called “the social gospel.” I find nothing at all, one way or the other, about faithful, life-long, same-sex relationships, those who live in them, and whether they should be ordained or not. Those who elevate concerns over the latter to the level of “gospel” are the ones who have some explaining to do.
GAFCON’s ideas are “ridiculous” and “deeply offensive” says the Bishop of Durham, the Rt. Rev. N.T. Wright in a BBC radio interview. “To be told that I now need to be authorised or validated by a group of primates somewhere else who come in and tell me which doctrines I should sign up to is not only ridiculous it’s deeply offensive.”
One salutary effect of GAFCON is that it has awakened the British public to the fact that conservatives attempting to take over the Anglican Communion mean business. The British press has been simultaneously hyping and decrying the right wing’s campaign, and support for an inclusive Communion has come from unlikely quarters.
Canon Kearon states, “Working with the summaries of the fruit of Indaba arising from each group, it will be their duty to generate a common text which reflects authentically the Indaba.” The text must reflect the mind of the bishops attending the 2008 Conference.