eChurch Blog

Telegraph:-

Anti-semitic attacks in Britain increase since Gaza invasion

The Community Security Trust (CST) recorded 609 anti-Semitic incidents in the first half of 2009, more than the total for all of last year.

Much of the surge took place in January when there were more than nine incidents in the UK every day.

CST spokesman Mark Gardner said: “British Jews are facing ever-higher levels of racist attack and intimidation that threaten the wellbeing of our otherwise happy and successful Jewish community.

“There is no excuse for anti-Semitism, racism and bias, and it is totally unacceptable that overseas conflicts should be impacting here in this way.”

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said: “Britain is setting a shameful new record in anti-Semitic incidents this year, which are running at double the annual rate of the previous record.

“It is completely abhorrent that anyone should be intimidated on the grounds of their race, colour, gender, sexuality or creed.

“We must stand firm against intolerance shown to any minority if we are to preserve a civilised society.”

Foreign Office minister Ivan Lewis said: “I am deeply concerned by the rise in the number of anti-Semitic incidents as reported by the CST today.

“The British government is firmly committed to tackling and reducing all forms of racism including anti-Semitism.

“We simply cannot tolerate those who seek to use foreign conflicts to justify racism and criminal acts against any UK citizen.

“The UK’s Jewish community is an integral part of the rich fabric that makes up modern Britain and must be able to live free from fear of verbal or physical attack.

“The Government was in regular contact with senior community figures and the CST during the Gaza conflict and remain alert to their concerns.”

The Communities and Local Government minister responsible for cohesion, Shahid Malik, added: “This rise in anti-Semitism is not just concerning for the British Jewish communities but for all those who see themselves as decent human beings.

“The fight against anti-Semitism is a fight that should engage us all. This country will not tolerate those who seek to direct hatred towards any part of our community.

“Of course it may be legitimate for individuals to criticise or be angry at the actions of the Israeli Government but we must never allow this anger to be used to justify anti-Semitism.”

Dioceses across England and Wales have begun to implement Swine Flu precautions which were sent out on 20 July to coincide with the beginning of the school holidays.

The Bishop of Portsmouth, Bishop Crispian Hollis  this morning issued the following statement:

During the current swine flu epidemic, in keeping with the latest guidelines that I have received, I recommend that the following measures be implemented in Catholic Churches throughout the diocese from this weekend:

The Sign of Peace during Mass: instead of a handshake members of the congregation are asked to join their hands together, as in prayer, turn to their immediate neighbours, bowing slightly and saying “Peace be with you”.

Holy Communion is to be given only on the hand, not on the tongue or from the chalice.

Ministers of the Sacred Host are asked to ensure their hands are washed with sanitizers (provided) before and after ministering communion.

These regulations will remain in place until further notice. It is hoped that the reasons for this temporary policy will be understood and appreciated. They have been made out of particular pastoral concern for the vulnerable, namely, the elderly, children and those with underlying health problems.

Bishop Crispian Hollis

Church Times

by Bill Bowder

BISHOPS continue to be hopeful about their future in the House of Lords, the Bishop of Winchester, the Rt Revd Michael Scott-Joynt, said on Wednesday, after the publication of another Bill promising reform.

The Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill, introduced to Par­liament on Monday, tackles the sub­ject of the remaining 92 hereditary peers. The proposal is to phase these out by ending the present system of holding a by-election among the peer­age whenever a hereditary Lord dies.

A statement by Jack Straw, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, suggested that the Govern­ment would reveal its plans for a fully or partially elected House of Lords after the summer, “with draft legisla­tion for pre-legislative scrutiny as soon as possible”.

Last year, Mr Straw said that the Bishops’ representation should con­tinue in a mainly elected House (News, 18 July 2008).

“The notion that the bishops are looking over their shoulders is not true,” Bishop Scott-Joynt said. “We are committed to doing what we think is a worthwhile job for as long as we are allowed to do so.”

Although there was nothing to prevent a bishop’s standing for election in a wholly elected House of Lords, it was “so hypothetical as to be not worth going into”.

The Government was “swinging almost by the day” between the idea of a 100-per-cent-elected House and an 80-per-cent-elected House, he said.

“Bishops are a sub-text in the question whether you have a wholly elected upper chamber.” If the numbers of Lords were cut, then bishops would expect to be cut “pro-rata”, which could make it hard for those left to sustain the current work­load, he said. At present, 26 bishops are eligible to sit in the Lords.

The House of Lords needed the skilled people it had to act as a re­viewing, revising, and occasionally delaying chamber that could hold the executive to account and do the work the Commons often failed to do, Bishop Scott-Joynt said. The Government could not ensure there were highly skilled people in the Lords if it was elected. An elected Lords would also be a threat to the supremacy of the Commons.

“I and my colleagues are quite clear that the more important ques­tions are the things to do with the governance of Britain and the import-ance of Parliament. It puzzles me why the Government is playing around with House of Lords reform.”

On Monday, Mr Straw’s statement was read out to the House of Lords by Lord Bach. He said that the Government was “fully committed” to the comprehensive reform of the Lords based on the primacy of the Commons, the independence of its members, who would serve for three normal parliamentary terms, direct election, and “sensible transitional arrangements” for existing peers.

After the summer recess, Parlia­ment would resolve the question whether the second chamber was to be 80 per cent or 100 per cent elec­ted, “in such a way as to make best use of a transitional period”, he told his peers.

By Matt Cresswell. Church of England Newspaper

Christian Traditionalists call for Greenbelt boycott

YOUTH CLUBS and families should consider skipping this year’s Greenbelt festival because of its pro-gay agenda, conservative Christians have urged.  Anglican Mainstream believes that young people could be led astray by Bishop Gene Robinson and other gay rights  campaigners at the Cheltenham-based festival. It has also questioned the involvement of the Church Mission Society in the event, which attracts 20,000 people each year.

Gay and lesbian Christian groups have since criticised the traditionalist organisation for its remarks, which they believe are inaccurate and exaggerated. The dispute follows a published article attacking this year’s festival by Dr Lisa Nolland, one of Anglican Mainstream’s leading members.

Commenting on the article, the Rev Canon Dr Chris Sugden said: “If nothing is done to bring into the marketplace of Greenbelt a biblically faithful point of view, publicly, that is available for people, then I think leaders of youth clubs and families should think very seriously about whether they want their young people to be in this environment; an environment where it is accepted that this [practising homosexuality] is a valid, completely acceptable expression of the Christian point of view.”  He said that the gay agenda was already pushed enough at schools and in the media and that there was no need for a Christian festival to be promoting it. He added that Gene Robinson was “clearly seeking to influence a lot of people.”

Anglican Mainstream, which has strong links with the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, has also questioned the Church Mission Society’s (CMS) involvement in the festival. In Nolland’s article she writes: “Highly respected Christian organisations like Church Mission Society are sponsors of Greenbelt. Unless it means ver y little to be a sponsor, surely CMS must be deeply embarrassed at this situation.”

The Rev Sharon Fergusson, spokesperson for the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement (LGCM) who will attend the festival, said that Anglican Mainstream’s remarks were not accurate and that Greenbelt would feature organisations with traditional views on Christian sexuality. She said: “Once again they are making a big deal out of nothing. They are going down the victimisation road. They are trying to make out that Christians who follow a traditional view on Christianity are being victimised and discriminated against and it’s just not the case.”

Responding to the accusation against it CMS said: “The proper place for mission is being in the marketplace. CMS has had a venue at the Greenbelt Festival for many years and it is a brilliant platform from which to offer hospitality and share the gospel.” CMS added that it was not a ‘sponsor’ but an ‘associate’ and was not involved in the particular decisions under debate. CMS added: “While we understand the reasons why Greenbelt has invited Gene Robinson, we are unhappy about it, particularly at this time in the life of the Anglican Communion. CMS supports the Lambeth Conference resolution 1.10.”

Greenbelt, which has the Archbishop of Canterbur y as its patron, has been provocative on numerous occasions since it began in1974. In previous years it featured the bikini-clad dancers of the Shef field Nine O’Clock Ser vice (before it ended scandalously in 1995). Another year a white witch was invited to speak at the festival. Greenbelt is refusing to comment on the criticisms.

Virtue Online

Dr. Rowan Williams Among The Ruins: What Should the ABC Do Now?

The House of Bishops of the Church of England meets in September when they will consider the new North American Anglican province’s (ACNA’s) Constitution and Canons. Following Durham Bishop Tom Wright’s scathing critique of what transpired at GC2009 there is every likelihood they will support ACNA. A number of Evangelical and Catholic bishops are already doing so – eight have signed the Private Member’s Motion – unprecedented in General Synod history.

This puts Dr. Rowan Williams in a very difficult position. At one level he can now offer a two-tier solution to the Anglican Communion’s malaise. He can also argue that he can now recognize both TEC and ACNA. He alone decides who to invite to the Lambeth Conference, and can circumvent the Anglican Communion Office and Canon Kenneth Kearon who has sworn eternal fealty to TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada and would never recognize ACNA if his job depended on it. (He needs TEC money to keep ACC afloat).

The General Synod is not in any way beholden to the ACC and can do as it likes. It could even, if it chose, reduce its financial contribution to ACC and ACO. If the Synod debates and passes the motion next February or next July, Kearon can think or say what he likes, it will not affect anything. The determination of who is or is not in communion with the CofE is a joint decision for the two Archbishops of Canterbury and York, who would find it difficult to refuse a Synod resolution. If ACNA is in then TEC may even be shown the door.

The truth is the ACC has become irrelevant following Jamaica and the debacle over Resolution 4. The vast majority of the CofE do not know what the ACC is, let alone cares. Churchgoers do not elect their ACC “representatives” they are chosen by the national church. Therefore ACC approval is something of an irrelevance. From now on one can expect that province by province will make its own decision. If the great bulk of the Communion declares itself to be in communion with ACNA, the ACC will have to fall in line.

At a deeper level, if ACNA is approved of by the Church of England, then it is not only extreme embarrassment for The Episcopal Church, but also evidence before American courts that TEC is no longer the exclusive holder of the Anglican badge. The implications for the Dennis Canon are enormous. TEC now bills itself as a hierarchical church. It will have to live and die by that ecclesiastical sword. For those watching from the sidelines, nobody can seriously have expected the 2009 General Convention to hold back from overturning B033, the fig leaf of respectability behind which TEC has been sheltering since 2006, and in Anaheim it finally crossed the Rubicon. TEC committed itself finally and irrevocably to LGBT “rights” (to all orders of ministry and same-sex blessings) ahead of any other consideration, including the express views of the Anglican Communion at the 1998 Lambeth Conference, and more recently the Windsor Report.

A last-minute plea from Archbishop Rowan Williams at the TEC Convention fell on deaf ears. TEC is already in a state of impaired communion with 22 out of the 38 provinces of the Anglican Communion. Its internal divisions over property have cost it hundreds of parishes and four dioceses, not to mention millions of dollars in legal fees.

Historically only the Archbishop of Canterbury, who invites the bishops to Lambeth Conferences, has the authority to determine who is in or out of communion, but the recent actions of TEC have forced several large provinces to take such a decision for themselves, thus diminishing the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

A large proportion of the Anglican Communion already out of communion with TEC, will soon declare an end to all relationships with it. This may well be re-echoed by The Russian Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church. We shall see.

VOL has begun to outline the growing attrition as a result of Anaheim, as remaining conservatives finally recognize the seriousness of the condition into which their church has been plunged by radical activists, who now have unassailable control of the denomination.

Even the most ardent of orthodox stayers now must ask how long they can endure TEC’s leadership which has now taken possession of General Convention and the House of Bishops especially after Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori condemned personal faith in Christ as a Western heresy.

Any lingering doubts in the minds of the Global South that TEC is an apostate and heretical institution were swept aside in Anaheim this past week. GAFCON’s Jerusalem Declaration is more prescient now than ever. When VOL inquired as to why we had heard nothing from archbishops like Akinola and Orombi the answer was simple, “look at the Jerusalem Declaration, what is there left to say?”

The newly installed ACNA Archbishop Robert Duncan did opine in an open letter to the Anglican Communion saying, “For Anglican Christians, for the Instruments of Unity (Communion), for interdependent Provinces, for ordinary believers, there is a choice to be made. The choice is between two religions, two roads, two cities, two sets of conflicting values and behaviors.”

Indeed.

GAFCON was set against the Lambeth Conference and Williams knew it. It was the elephant in the tent at Canterbury. He could not ignore 70% – 80% of the Communion.

But the divisions go still deeper. The onslaught against orthodox Anglicans in the USA and Canada has been of such concern to other provinces that U.S. and Canadian Anglicans have consecrated bishops to offer a place of refuge for orthodox Anglicans and to reach the U.S.’s 130 million unchurched Americans – the goal of the AMiA.

This would not have been necessary if TEC had truly allowed flying bishops with real authority.

Real estate seizures (based on the Dennis Canon), depositions of TEC’s orthodox bishops and priests, along with the morphing of the presiding bishop from chairman of the HOB into a full -blown medieval prelate, have created a church founded not on the word of God, but legal fundamentalism, determined to purge itself of all opposition.

Of course it could be argued that had the Archbishop of Canterbury exercised his personal authority as head of the Communion, even though he has no formal legal status, things might have been different. But he didn’t and wouldn’t. He demurred and deferred holding out the carrot of compromise rather than the stick of expulsion from the communion.

At the end of the day he was not willing to alienate TEC. Even as late as the 2008 Lambeth Conference the invitations to TEC bishops could have been withdrawn, sending the clearest signal that TEC must change direction.

He didn’t and wouldn’t. The inaction of Rowan Williams has been monumental. Even as the turmoil in the Communion grew he prevaricated and dodged the hard answers he should have given. He lost a golden opportunity in New Orleans and at another historical moment following Dar es Salaam when he was armed with a resolution to hold TEC accountable.

The result is that provinces have determined for themselves who is or is not in communion with them. The GAFCON primates, as they have been dubbed, and who hold the bulk of Anglicans in their bosom are the genuine holders of the Anglican keys.

It is difficult to see how the Archbishop or his office can ever recover the authority it once held. He has alienated his authority and has no one to blame but himself.

A meeting of the Anglican primates at Lambeth Palace preceded the consecration of homogenital bishop Gene Robinson in 2003. At that time Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold was a signatory of a letter urging TEC not to proceed. He nevertheless returned to the U.S. and personally presided at the service, telling everyone that it was not his decision, but that of the church and that he could do nothing about it. He made a mockery of both the statement and Williams himself.

Williams took it lying down.

A wave of protests followed in the U.S. sparking yet more litigation amid dissenters and growing concern elsewhere in the Anglican Communion for the orthodoxy of TEC and for the pastoral care of conservatives within it.

Little was said and nothing was done by Lambeth Palace.

At each subsequent Primates’ meeting when orthodox archbishops urged Williams to act, he did nothing, using the language of “I have no power.” Worse, Williams continued to protect TEC by doing as little as possible to respond to the concerns of the primates. The primates’ meeting was also finally downgraded by Williams who prevented it from meeting as it had done previously.

The 2008 Lambeth Conference saw TEC bring a large contingent of bishops (even though it has only ASA 700,000 Episcopalians) accompanied by numerous activists including the uninvited Gene Robinson and a transsexual priest from the Diocese of Massachusetts.

Williams had to come up with a strategy to hold it all together. He called it “indaba” a process of candid conversation that resolved nothing. It is now being promoted around the Communion as a means of doing business. Indaba has now transmogrified into ubuntu – “I in you and you in me” but this has neither have united nor provided the healing balm the Communion needs.

Williams “Affirming Catholicism”, supported by the then Scottish primus, former bishop Richard Holloway, as well as a gaggle of English sympathizers and TEC’s Frank Griswold has been the ABC’s vision for the future of the Anglican Communion. It has flat out failed. The attempt has produced nothing but despair, lamentation and alienation for orthodox Anglicans.

The growing acceptance of women priests in many provinces has further alienated Anglo-Catholics from mainstream Anglicanism. A number of evangelicals believe that making women’s ordination mandatory rather than voluntary in TEC and now the CofE has further alienated and angered broad-minded Anglicans. ACNA is demonstrating that both views can live side by side in harmony. The actions of the TEC making women’s ordination mandatory virtually guaranteed that they would walk away, and three dioceses have recently done so.

Nonetheless, homosexuality, a salvation issue, remains the lightning rod problem driving evangelical Anglicans out of TEC. A theology of morality impacting Christology and denies the authority of scripture is a bridge too far. Revisionists have liberalized and relativized clear biblical prohibitions at great cost to themselves and before a watching world.

While the scriptural evidence for excluding women from holy orders contains a number of possible ambiguities: no such ambiguity exists with respect to homosexuality, as Pittsburgh Professor Robert Gagnon has so thoroughly demonstrated.

The recent actions by TEC in Anaheim and Jefferts Schori’s statements about salvation only vindicate the formation of a new Anglican province in North America. ACNA has garnered the support of the largest Anglican provinces in the communion further alienating Williams who gave TEC his tacit support in Anaheim. Furthermore 40 million Evangelical Anglicans in the Global South found Schori’s remarks shallow and theologically offensive.

What is happening is that Williams and the Anglican Consultative Council are simply being bypassed by orthodox Anglicans. GAFCON, ACNA and FCA are simply ignoring the ABC and ACC by going around them to form their own more perfect union and grow the church. Meanwhile, Western pan-Anglicanism slowly withers and dies. Williams’ pleas for restraint in Anaheim were blown off like so much Disneyland hype.

On his return to England, for the meeting of the General Synod in York, he was in constant communication with TEC leaders, who delivered the bad news as it happened.

It was reported that on the final day of the Synod he was reduced to feebly hoping that the bishops of TEC would hold the line, despite the overwhelming vote in the House of Deputies. It never happened. On the final day of GC2009 the House of Deputies voted 2 to 1 to pass Resolution C056 allowing rites for same sex unions to be official dogma, even though the Presiding Bishop wrote (not once but twice) that the actions of GC2009 were descriptive not proscriptive. No one with half a brain believes that for a moment.

At the same time, members of the CofE General Synod were flocking to sign a private member’s motion calling for the Church of England to be in communion with ACNA; and asking hard questions about the Church of England’s relationship with the Church of Sweden, which is about to authorize same gender marriages by its clergy. The biggest bombshell, however, was the announcement by Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham that the ACNA Canons and Constitution have already been laid before the English House of Bishops to be debated in September.

Williams might have hoped for a quieter life following the retirement of conservative bishop Michael Nazir-Ali, to whom he bade a somewhat ungenerous farewell at the end of the Synod, but worse was to come: the endorsement of gay ordinations and of rites for same-gender unions by the TEC House of Bishops produced in short order a ringing denunciation in the Times newspaper by the Bishop of Durham and a matching statement by his liberal evangelical Fulcrum organization, which has hitherto sat carefully on the fence on such issues.

So far there has been silence from Lambeth Palace, presumably a stunned silence. Wright is not only the chief author of the Windsor Report, and a proponent of the ill-fated Covenant which was supposed to draw the Communion back together, but is a leading voice among liberal evangelicals in England. They are large in number and influential in the councils of the Church, and have hitherto been strongly critical of their more conservative counterparts who have supported GAFCON, FCA and ACNA. Williams now faces the prospect of the whole evangelical wing united in condemnation of the Affirming Catholic agenda which he has sought to promote for the last fifteen years.”

Williams has nowhere else to look for support. Half of the Anglo-Catholic movement, to which he once belonged, left the Church of England over women priests in 1993. Affirming Catholics enjoyed a period of dominance having supplanted conservative Catholics, and for a while almost every new bishop appointed wore the badge. But once women priests were a fact of life much of the raison d’être of Affirming Catholicism was dissipated, and the movement has lost momentum, so much so that its Scottish branch recently closed for lack of support.

What is most troubling for Williams is that English ordination candidates these days are firmly Evangelical. Congregations and dioceses are asking for Evangelical bishops, and many have been appointed, with every indication that this will be the trend for the foreseeable future. There are 25 evangelical bishops in the HoB and that number seems only to be growing. Conservative Catholics, and much of the mainstream, have disappeared from the ordination process.

Williams’ friends in the HoB are steadily retiring, leaving him increasingly isolated in a church which respects his academic credentials, but is less certain of his agenda, and left wondering about his leadership in a time of such crisis.

Williams is being seen more and more as a brilliant fool. Nobody any longer believes in the strategies which have been proposed to resolve the North American crisis. The Instruments of Unity, the Panel of Reference, the Pastoral Visitors, the ACC, the ACO, the Windsor Report, the Covenant, Indaba and Ubuntu are all dead in the water. They have not even delayed, let alone arrested the momentum of TEC towards the edge of the cliff.

The time has come for Williams himself to choose. Will he heed at last the calls of the global south for an Anglicanism which is faithful to scripture? Will he act against the remaining liberal voices in the Church of England who aim to see TEC replicated in the mother church? Will he recognize ACNA as a province in communion with him? Will he work with the new Evangelical bishops in his own provinces who have already concluded that the old order is at an end and that the Anglican Communion must be a Communion of churches in doctrinal, not structural agreement with one another? Will he heed the calls to withdraw recognition of ministers ordained in TEC and instead to recognize ACNA?

His options grow fewer by the day. If he stays silent in Lambeth Palace he will be seen as acquiescing to the left. If he believes the letters put out by Jefferts Schori to himself and to the wider Anglican Communion that nothing really changed at GC2009 he is deluding himself. No one in the Global South is buying the snake oil Jefferts Schori is selling. The scandals, lawsuits and the hemorrhaging of members from TEC will not suddenly cease because of the actions of GC2009.

Will he devise yet more convoluted stratagems designed to pretend that the discussion continues, knowing in his heart of hearts that his master plan for Anglicanism is now in ruins?

It is a lonely position for Williams to occupy. For Williams, his own time came and is now gone. There is no retrieving it. His Affirming Catholicism has failed as it was bound to from the very beginning, for it failed to take into account the great majority of the Anglican Communion which remains committed to the authority, not of an archbishops, or lawyers, or General Conventions, but of something infinitely greater: Holy Scripture.

America Magazine – Author: Austen Ivereigh

Only days after the the Episcopal Church (TEC) at Anaheim. Calif., defied the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lambeth Conference by agreeing to resume gay blessings and consecrations of actively gay bishops — read MSW here – comes news that 34 American bishops have defied the defiers. The rebels have issued a “letter of dissent” from the decisions taken at Anaheim and say they agree to the moratoriums and to the Covenant process agreed at last year’s Lambeth conference of Anglican bishops worldwide.

Lost already? Here’s a quick recap of the slow-mo train crash that is the Anglican crisis:

In 2003, the North-American Episcopalians (now called TEC) — membership: 2m — consecrated Gene Robinson, a divorced man in a civil partnership with another man, as bishop, against the express wishes of the 38 Anglican primates, or heads of provinces. This precipitated a long-simmering crisis over homosexuality within the Anglican Communion (membership: 80m).

The developing-world Anglican churches demanded that TEC be disciplined. The Archbishop of Canterbury calmed the crisis by appointing a commission to suggest how Anglican unity could be strengthened. The Eames Commission produced the Windsor Report (2004), which laid out two conditions for TEC remaining in the fold: the Church should not ordain more gay bishops, and should desist from approving same-sex blessings. In 2006, TEC agreed to these moratoriums.

Although Gene Robinson was not invited to last year’s Lambeth Conference, the once-in-a-decade meeting of Anglican bishops worldwide, TEC was. This was unacceptable to 280 developing-world bishops (about a third of the total), who boycotted the Lambeth Conference, and set up their own parallel Communion, the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FOCA), which does not recognise the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Dr Williams persuaded the delegates at Lambeth to agree to a process leading towards a Covenant, which is the beginnings of a Catholic-style ecclesiogy of communion, but without “papal powers”. It will involve some degree of agreement on doctrinal questions.

Last week, at Anaheim, the bishops at the TEC Episcopal General Convention voted 104-30 to develop liturgies for blessing same-sex relationships, while the motion to allow the consecration of gay bishops passed 99-45.

Quite what was actually decided in the Los Angeles suburb is a matter of dispute — especially among those who were there. But it’s clear that TEC’s commitment to maintaining the moratoriums is over. Writing recently in the Guardian, Jim Naughton, canon for communications at the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, saw last week’s vote as a chance finally to “push back” what he calls Dr Williams’s “centralising agenda” and his attempt to impose “a single-issue magisterium on the issue of homosexuality”. This piece at Episcopal Cafe offers a fascinating example of just how strong in parts of the TEC is its  anti-Catholic prejudice: Dr Williams’s efforts are seen as “Romanesque” and examples of “Catholic authoritarianism”.

Yet “there are many American Episcopalians, inside and outside the present TEC, who are eager to sign the proposed Covenant,” writes the Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright — and the dissenters’ letter bears this out. Bishop Wright adds that their “aspiration must be honoured” — implying that those in TEC who did not vote for abrogating the moratoriums should be in some way recognised by Canterbury.

So we now have the prospect of Canterbury recognising those in the TEC who agree with the Covenant, and not those that don’t. That split adds to the other between TEC and the breakaway conservatives in the Anglican Church of North America (membership: 100,000) which is seeking recognition from Canterbury.

The point is, “schism” is not the right word for what is happening. A schism refers to a part of the Christian body separating from another. But the TEC is insufficiently united in itself to break away from the wider Anglican Church; and the Anglican Communion is insufficiently united to constitute something that can be broken away from.

It’s much more complex, and messy, than schism. It’s full-on balkanisation.

But out of chaos, order is emerging. Anglicans are splitting into two camps: a core of Anglicans — those committed to the Covenant process — are coming closer together, under Dr Williams’s leadership, while the rest are spinning away from Canterbury and from each other.

The real split is not over homosexuality but between “Catholics” and “Protestants”, the key historic tension within Anglicanism. The fissures do not run cleanly between provinces and churches, as the Anaheim rebels show. But this crisis is forcing people to choose. This is the real division: between those who believe in a Catholic ecclesiology and those who do not.

The “Protestants” — divided between liberals and conservative evangelicals, in radical disagreement over homosexuality, as over much else  — cannot, by definition, come together, and will continue to fragment, leaving the “Covenant” Anglicans to come together around a firmer, more Catholic ecclesiology. Within the “Catholic” camp there will remain strong disagreements over homosexuality, but those are less important than the shared conception of Church.

Rome, of course, is firmly behind Dr Williams and the Covenant process: they know that at the end of it there is the prospect of an Anglican Church they can seek unity with. It’ll be a lot smaller, necessarily, than the current Anglican Communion. But the prospects of unity will at last be real. It’ll take years; maybe none of us will see it in our lifetimes. But my bet is that the before the end of Dr Williams’ term the foundations for Catholic-Anglican unity will have been laid  — even as he is depicted as having helplessly overseen the disintegration of the Anglican Communion.

BBC

Q&A: The Swine flu service

The National Pandemic Swine Flu Service has been launched in England. It is the latest move in the government’s fight against swine flu. But what will it do and why has it been established now?

What is the swine flu service for?

The swine flu line is a phone and internet service.

To contact the service,

call 0800 1 513 100

or log on to

http://www.direct.gov.uk/pandemicflu

https://www.pandemicflu.direct.gov.uk/

It uses a checklist to diagnose whether people have swine flu and can then give them access to anti-flu drugs if necessary.

Pregnant women, children under one and people with underlying health conditions are all still being advised to contact doctors.

What is more, no-one is duty bound to use the service. They can still contact their GP if they wish.

Those who are deemed to have swine flu by the service will be given a voucher number and asked to arrange for a “flu friend” to pick up anti-viral drugs from a distribution point.

They will be asked to bring ID for themselves and the swine flu sufferer to verify who they are.

The flu service has always been envisaged – it was part of the official contingency plans – but was said to have been delayed until the autumn.

Does this mean it has been rushed out?

Yes. Officials say it is only the interim version, not the “all-singing, all dancing” one that will be in place by the autumn.

From the start, there will be 1,500 people at most staffing the call centres.

In time, this number will be increased to cope with surges in demand.

The UK government is also hoping to introduce a bit more flexibility into the checklist so it can respond quickly to changes in the virus.

However, they are insistent it is fully capable of doing the job it is designed for in the immediate future – relieving the pressure on GPs.

Why is it being introduced now?

The second week of July was the turning point. There was a sudden surge in demand on the NHS.

There were a suspected 55,000 new cases of swine flu in the space of seven days, while services were deluged with requests from the worried-well.

NHS Direct saw its calls rise to four times the normal winter levels, when demand on the service is at its highest.

For GPs, the consultation rate for flu-like illness rose to over 70 per 100,000.

In isolation, this is not that high. It reached a similar figure during the winter for seasonal flu and is still well short of the 200 needed for epidemic proportions.

However, what the headline figure does not illustrate is the pressure being put on services in hot-spots.

For example, in one London borough, the consultation rate topped 700 per 100,000.

Hospitals in the West Midlands have reported having wards full of swine flu patients.

The following week, the situation got even worse with an extra 100,000 new swine flu cases.

The UK government felt it had to get the swine flu line running to take some of the pressure off the NHS and allow doctors to focus on the most ill as well as on their regular patients suffering from serious conditions such as heart disease and asthma.

Won’t it be open to abuse?

Sir Liam Donaldson, the chief medical officer, has admitted people will be able to cheat the system.

It will not be long before the “correct” answers that will get people anti-viral drugs will appear on the internet somewhere.

However, the government accepts this is a price worth paying for relieving the pressure on the health service.

Sir Liam says he believes it will only be a “minority” of people who abuse the system.

There are also safeguards in place. Everyone in the country has a unique swine flu number so, if they try to get anti-virals more than once, the NHS will know.

Why does it only cover England?

Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales have all decided to stay out of the service as the demands being placed on health staff are not as great.

Even though Scotland saw the first case of swine flu and had the first death, the country is not seeing the “exceptional” levels of demand seen in every region of England.

And the fact is that single GP practices in London have seen more cases than the whole of Wales or Northern Ireland.

Also, GPs in all three nations do not tend to have such large patient lists as in England, leaving them more able to cope with fluctuating demand.

However, all three will be able to plug into the service if they need to.

Wigan Today

I wonder if they would consider doing a Quran version of this…..mmm…yes….I wonder?

Telegraph:-

Art gallery invites visitors to deface the Bible

By Alastair Jamieson
Published: 10:37AM BST 23 Jul 2009

The open Bible is part of the Made in God’s Image exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art (Goma) in Glasgow.

Its inclusion was the idea of a local church which hoped gallery visitors would suggest ways in which the Bible could be “reclaimed as a sacred text”.

A sign next to a container of pens says: “If you feel you have been excluded from the Bible, please write your way back into it.”

The Bible has already been adorned with comments, according to The Times, including “**** the Bible” and “This is all sexist pish, so disregard it all.”

A contributor wrote on the first page of Genesis: “I am Bi, Female & Proud. I want no god who is disappointed in this.”

The exhibit, Untitled 2009, was proposed by the Metropolitan Community Church, an international Christian group which describes itself as offering “inclusive Christian ministry to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered communities”.

The £7,000 exhibition, which is funded by the Scottish Arts Council and is free of charge, has been created by the artists Anthony Schrag and David Malone in association with organisations representing gay Christians and Muslims.

Mr Schrag, 34, told the newspaper: “Any offensive things that have been written are not the point of the work. It was an open gesture. Are those who say they are upset offended by the things that people write, or just by the very notion that someone should write on a Bible?”

He added: “If we are to open up the Bible for discussion, surely we have to invite people to speak out. Art allows us to discuss difficult things, and Goma allows difficult discussions to take place — that is why Glasgow is at the cutting edge of contemporary art.”

Jane Clarke, a minister of the community church, said she regretted the insults that had appeared. “The Bible should never be used like that. It was our intention to reclaim it as a sacred text,” she said.

The Times said one visitor had altered the first line of the Old Testament from “In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth” to “In the beginning, God (me) I created religion” while another has written “The Gospel According to Luke Skywalker”.

The Church of Scotland said it condemned any sacrilegious act, while a spokesman for the Catholic Church said: “One wonders whether the organisers would have been quite as willing to have the Koran defaced.”

Andrea Minichiello Williams, director of the Christian Legal Centre, said: “We have got to a point where we call the desecration of the Bible modern art. The Bible stands for everything this art does not: for creation, beauty, hope and regeneration.”

Another exhibit consist of a video that shows a young woman ripping pages out of the Bible and stuffing them in her underwear and in her mouth.

Made in God’s Image is part of a series of exhibitions focusing on human rights organised by Culture and Sport Glasgow, part of the city council. The division’s chief executive is Dr Bridget McConnell, wife of the former Labour First Minister Jack McConnell.

Telegraph

Suspend sharing of communion chalice, says Church

By Elizabeth Barrett, Press Association

Thursday, 23 July 2009

The Archbishops have written to Bishops in the Church of England setting out the new measures following Department of Health advice not to share “common vessels” for food or drink.

The letter said it aimed to offer guidance at a national level about how church worship could “best take into account the interests of public health during the current phase of the swine flu pandemic”.

Some bishops have already taken the step in a bid to limit the spread of the virus.

For those still wishing to offer both bread and wine, the Archbishops recommended allowing the priest to dip communion wafers in the chalice before handing them out to communicants.

However presiding ministers are reminded in the letter to wash their hands thoroughly before undertaking communion.

It said: “The Department of Health have recently advised us that ‘in a pandemic it makes good sense to take precautions to limit the spread of disease by not sharing common vessels for food and drink’.

“In the light of this advice, we recommend those presiding at Holy Communion suspend the administration of the chalice during this wave of pandemic flu.

“For those who still wish to offer in both kinds, we recommend the practice whereby the presiding minister, whose hands should have been washed with the appropriate alcohol based rub before handling the elements and the vessels, personally intincts all wafers before placing them in the hands of communicants.”