eChurch Blog

I found this article interesting, although I’m not saying that I agree with all of it, for example, I always smell a whiff of Dominionism when I read comments such as, “restoring a Christian culture”.

I understand how much Christianity has impacted the formation of European culture and society, but the “glory” days are over and I personally tend to view faith in personal micro terms nowadays rather than macro.

Maybe I have become pessimistic, however, I am glad to see inter-Christian ecumenicalism alive and well, as this begins to fulfil the prayer of Jesus for unity. The church should unify and stand for eternal moral values (Love God and love your neighbour as yourself), however, this is only done by example and not by finger wagging.

The Gospel is the GOOD news of Jesus Christ and not the stick to bash the unregenerated and constantly point out how bad society and individuals are.

NAPLES, FL. (Catholic Online) – Over four decades ago Pope John Paul II said that the restoration of the Russian Orthodox Church was necessary for the cultural restoration of Western Europe. At the time his words seemed audacious. Russia was still under the Communist yoke, the winds in Poland were just starting to blow, and the Berlin wall loomed invincible.

Culture watchers dismissed the statement as the wistful longing of a faithful man. Yet John Paul, with his gift of seeing through the clutter of immediate events into the deeper and far-reaching ways of God, knew better. He believed that the fall of Communism would unleash a transformation that could only come from those who suffered.

His words are proving true. The Orthodox Church in Russia, after 80 years of brutal persecution, is emerging not only as a religious force in Europe, but also as the new leader in worldwide Orthodox Christianity. More Christians have been killed for their faith in the last century than all other centuries combined. Many of them were the Orthodox Christians of Eastern Europe.

Pope John Paul had a great fondness towards the Orthodox Church but never realized his dream of visiting Moscow or Constantinople. That would fall to his successor. At the time, the strain between Orthodoxy and Catholicism in general and Moscow and Rome in particular was more pronounced. Now the climate is changing.

What accounts for the shift? One reason is the election last year of Patriarch Kirill, the new leader of the Russian Orthodox Church. +Kirill is a theological conservative in the mold of Pope Benedict. Both see religion as the wellspring of culture. Both understand that Europe cannot escape a final capitulation to tyranny if it does not rediscover its Christian roots.

The relationship between the Orthodox and Catholics continues to have significant strains however, and the present rapprochement is not an impending sign that the Churches will soon unify. Nevertheless, there is greater unity in the frank acceptance of real differences than in the shallow reality that is created by pretending they don’t exist. Accept the differences and the skies clear. We see that much work can be done together.

One area of cooperation is restoring Christian culture. If religion is the wellspring of culture, then our moral orientation – how we live and behave, the choices we make, how we order our relationships, how we value the human person – becomes critical. The spiritual life of the Christian is really a life that is lived in ways pleasing to God under the Great Commandment: Love God and neighbor. How we treat one another really matters. It touches not only the neighbor but reaches deep into the larger society.

Moreover, obedience to the Great Commandment is also the guarantor of freedom. If people throw off their responsibility to God and neighbor and live for themselves, then they will either relinquish their freedom to others or a greater power will take it from them.

Pope John Paul understood this. Pope Benedict and Patriarch Kirill understand this too. They experienced tyranny first hand. They know that virtue is the only bulwark against oppression. That’s why they exhort their flocks to moral virtue in almost identical language.

Moreover, both leaders see that moral renewal is essential for the renewal of Europe. Religion cannot be separated from morality, and morality cannot be separated from religion. A healthy and free society requires morally virtuous people, and people discover the freedom virtue fosters through religion.

If Europe’s moral collapse continues, more instability will result and a new power will arise to maintain order. It could be a state ideology that resembles the former Communist tyrannies of Eastern Europe, or more likely a closed religion like the Islam of the East.

The next decade may be one of both instability and great creativity, much like the 1980s and 1990s of the last century. It’s a very exciting time to be alive, but it will also require more of all Christians. We have capable leaders to help us see things more clearly.

—–

Fr Johannes L. Jacobse is an Orthodox priest serving in Naples, FL. He is the editor of Orthodoxy Today (www.orthodoxytoday.org) and President of the American Orthodox Institute (www.aoiusa.org).

Question A:-

Compare and contrast the following two articles reporting on the Church of England’s Synod vote on the Anglican church in North America (ACNA). (50 Points)

David – Virture Online:-

BREAKING NEWS…ACNA Recognized in Spirited Debate by Church of England Synod

A spirited debate by the Church of England Synod saw the newly formed Anglican Church in North America recognized by all three houses – bishops, clergy and laity in an overwhelming vote.

The final vote was 309 in favor, 69 against and 17 recorded abstentions.

The following is the final draft of the resolution.

“That this Synod aware of the distress caused by recent divisions within the Anglican churches of the United States of America, recognize and affirm the desire of those who have formed the Anglican church in North America (ACNA) to remain within the Anglican family; acknowledge that this aspiration, in respect both of relations with the Church of England and membership of the Anglican Communion, raises issues which the relevant authorities of each need to explore further; and invite the Archbishops to report further to the Synod in 2011.”

The original motion by Lorna Ashley, “that this Synod express the desire that the Church of England be in communion with the Anglican Church in North America,” was defeated. She expressed satisfaction with the final amended resolution.

The original motion went through several amendments, but the final vote after nearly three hours of debate made it clear that ACNA deserved to be recognized as Anglican but delegates needed a year to think and pray over it. Both the Archbishops of Canterbury and York voted for the final amended resolution.

On any kind of reading the passage of this resolution sends a signal to The Episcopal Church that they are not the only Anglican players in North America and the actions of TEC at GC2009 accelerated what took place here today.

Many will view this as a slap in the face at Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori and an affirmation of the ministry and ecclesiastical of ACNA Archbishop Robert Duncan.

One observer said this should have been a decade’s long process but it was clearly truncated and brought to a head by actions of the Episcopal Church over passage of two resolutions D025 and C056 last summer in Anaheim, California.

Motions to pass to next business and to adjourn the debate were lost.

David – Anglican Samizdat:-

The Lorna Ashworth Church of England Synod motion

Her original motion before the Church of England Synod was, “that this Synod express the desire that the Church of England be in communion with the Anglican Church in North America.” It was defeated and an amended version passed 309 to 69 with 17 abstentions.

That this Synod, aware of the distress cause by recent divisions within the Anglican churches of the United States of America and Canada,
(a) recognise and affirm the desire of those who have formed the Anglican Church in North America to remain within the Anglican family;
(b) acknowledge that this aspiration, in respect both of relations with the Church of England and membership of the Anglican Communion, raises issues which the relevant authorities of each need to explore further; and
(c) invite the Archbishops to report further to the Synod in 2011.

Lorna Ashworth’s reason for bringing the motion to synod was to “send a strong message of encouragement to people who are practising Biblical historical Anglicanism” – that’s it. The motion was not that the CoE be in communion with the ACNA, only that the synod express the desire that it should be so.

But even that was too much for the synod, so the Anglican-bland amended motion was put forward stating the reverse of the original motion – the desire of the ACNA to be part of the Anglican Communion.

That this is typically Anglican is evidenced by the 1 year delay, the expectation of a report and the fact that it is sufficiently woolly that people on each side of the issue see support or lack thereof depending on what they had for breakfast.

Lorna Ashworth, before the synod debate, said the heart of her motion was that “we desire to be communion”; the heart was ripped out by the amendment.

Well this is interesting. I wonder how much the Catholics would have in common with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA), being as the ELCA recently endorsed gay marriage and changed their standards to allow pastors and other rostered leaders to be in committed same-sex relationships.

This move has led to a Lutheran ‘break away’ group (Lutheran Core) to consider splitting with the ELCA. Perhaps the Pope should be talking with Lutheran Core, or perhaps he already is……..

(CNA).- After today’s general audience, the Holy Father met with a delegation from the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) in which he expressed hope for the “continuing Lutheran-Catholic dialogue.”

The Lutheran delegation was led by the ELCA’s Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson, who is also President of the Lutheran World Foundation, the global Lutheran partner to the Catholic Church since the Second Vatican Council.

The Holy Father addressed the delegation in English, saying that he hoped “the continuing Lutheran-Catholic dialogue both in the United States of America and at the international level will help to build upon the agreements reached so far.”

One such agreement is a joint declaration on the Doctrine of Justification signed by the Vatican and the Lutheran World Federation on October 31, 1999. It was the product of nearly 35 years of Lutheran-Catholic dialogue in the United States and abroad.

The Pope the noted that an important additional task “will be to harvest the results of the Lutheran-Catholic dialogue that so promisingly started after the Vatican Council II.”  In order to continue “what has been achieved together since that time, he encouraged Lutherans and Catholics toward “ardent prayer” and “conversion to Christ, the source of grace and truth” in order to build a “spiritual ecumenism.”

“May the Lord help us to treasure what has been accomplished so far, to guard it with care, and to foster its development,” the Pope prayed.

The Holy Father concluded by echoing his predecessor, John Paul II’s words while addressing a similar Lutheran delegation in 1985: “Let us rejoice that an encounter such as this can take place. Let us resolve to be open to the Lord so that He can use this meeting for His purposes, to bring about the unity that He desires. Thank you for the efforts you are making for full unity in faith and charity.”

Encouraging cross-post from Living Journey:-

It was quite a while ago when I posted about a Muslim Zionist who speaks out against the current Islamic rhetoric about Israel not being recognised. Previously I said this:

It’s not every day that a Muslim intellectual puts his own head on the line to defend Israel’s right to exist. But that is exactly what Magdi Allam, an Egyptian-born Italian writer and journalist, has been doing for years. He recently published a book whose name alone is enough to endanger his life: “Long Live Israel – From the Ideology of Death to the Civilization of Life: My Story.”Allam directly links the denial of Israel’s right to exist to the death cult being nurtured in fundamentalist Islamic circles, and refers to “the ethical erosion that has led to even the denial of the supreme value of the sanctity of life.” Allam sees Israel as “an ethical parameter that separates between lovers of civilization and those who preach the ideology of death.” The sanctity of life, he writes, “applies to everyone, or to no one.” Read More

Well, I found another outspoken Muslim who thinks the same. Sheikh Palazzi has some very important things to say about Israel and Jerusalem and the failure of the Palestinians not recognising Israel. He even says that Israel should continue to build in Judea and Samaria even though President Obama says THIS. Most interesting to note is that Professor Hillel Weiss from the Organization of the Nascent Sanhedrin speaks about the prophetic structure… or something along those lines. I don’t really get what he says, but I thought it was interesting because it seems to me that this newly established Sanhedrin is gaining more of a political voice through mainstream media!

This is a must watch video…

Sheikh Palazzi believes that the authentic teachings of Muhammad as expressed in the Qur’an and the Hadith instruct Moslems to support the return of the Jewish nation to its historic homeland in Israel, and the rebuilding of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem.

The Sheikh’s credentials are impeccable, having received his Islamic education from leading mainstream Saudi Arabian and Egyptian Sunni institutions. Highly controversal in today’s Islamic milieu, Sheikh Palazzi is nevertheless widely recognized as one of the leading Moslem experts today. A long time supporter of Israel, he is a self-described “Zionist Moslem.”

And don’t forget that there are many Arabs for Israel, here is a site worth checking out…

arabs for israel We are Arabs and Moslems who believe we can support Israel and the Palestinian people

All this is good news but we must remember that Moslems also need the saving faith that can only be found in Christ Jesus; and for this we should pray. For more information on Moslems that have met the real Jesus of the bible please see Walid Shoebat from Hate to Love and Kamal Saleem from Koome Ministries.

This is a worrying escalation against the Christian community in Morocco.

Morocco is strategically very important for the Gospel, as it is the entrance point to Islamic North Africa and being geographically so close to Southern Spain, provides a very convenient jumping-off-point.

Of course the Moroccan authorities know this only too well.

Christian Post:-

Approximately 60 officers from the Moroccan security services on Thursday afternoon (Feb. 4) raided the home of a Christian in Amizmiz, a picturesque city of 10,000 mainly Berber people 56 kilometers (35 miles) southeast of Marrakech. A church Bible study was in progress at the home with visitors from western and southern Morocco, the leaders said.

Five of the 18 people held for 14 hours were small children, two of them infants no more than 6 months old. The other small children ranged from 20 months to 4 years old, and also detained was the visiting 16-year-old nephew of one of the participants.

The Christian leaders said authorities interrogated participants in the Bible study for 14 hours. The authorities filmed the interrogations with digital video cameras and cell phones.

The leader of the Christian group, who requested anonymity for security reasons, said the raiding party was unusually large. It included an accompaniment of 15 vehicles led by a colonel and two captains.

“It’s the first time in our current Moroccan church history that the Moroccan government used this size of a legion to attack a small Christian meeting,” he said. “All the time they kept repeating that this was ordered personally by the new Moroccan Justice Minister [Mohamed Naciri] and by the highest level General of the Gendarmerie [Housni Benslimane].”

Quoting a statement by the Interior Ministry, the state-run Maghreb Arabe Presse news agency reported that a “foreign missionary” had been arrested for trying to “spread evangelist creed in the Kingdom and locate new Moroccan nationals for recruitment.”

The statement added that the raid took place “following information on the organization of a secret meeting to initiate people into Christianity, which would shake Muslims’ faith and undermine the Kingdom’s religious values.”

The U.S. citizen, whose name has not been released, was deported immediately after interrogation. The Christian leaders said the visiting Moroccans were sent back to their homes in western and southern Morocco.

Authorities seized Bibles, books, two laptops, a digital camera and one cell phone, they said.

“I don’t think this number of Moroccan government forces was ever used even against Muslim fundamentalists,” the leader of the Christian group said.

Continue Reading

Cross-post Seismic Shock:-

As I have seen news of this study looking at the relationship between religion and morality, I thought I’d link to it for anyone that’s interested.

This is the link to the study

Most of the headlines I have seen have been trumpeting the fact that the non-religious also have the capacity for morality, we’ll I’ll be, what a surprise. Here’s one from the Telegraph today:-

Atheists are the first to throw this fact at the religious world, as if all Christians believe that non-Christians are utterly incapable of morality. Of course this is nonsense, however, I would still maintain that a sense of morality is hard-wired in the human heart, by the designer, as a ‘restraining grace’ in all folks, regardless of belief. It is of course possible to deaden this sense of morality, by repeated acts of immorality, but in general and given the propensity for humans to perpetrate evil, this ‘restraining grace’ of morality is needed to stop the world degenerating into chaos and anarchy.

This is how Science and Religion Today introduce the study:-

Did morality appear before religion?

Marc Hauser of Harvard University and Ilkka Pyysiäinen of the University of Helsinki have published an opinion piece in Trends in Cognitive Sciences that looks at the link between morality and religion.

They point out that several psychological studies (many conducted using the Moral Sense Test) have shown that when it comes to unfamiliar moral dilemmas, atheists and those with a religious background show no difference in their moral judgments—suggesting that our intuitive judgments of right and wrong operate independently from our religious beliefs. Experiments did show that people with a religious background were more likely to sacrifice their own lives to save the greatest number of others, but the researchers argue that “religious pressures might lead people to offer this judgment because they believe it is the morally appropriate answer. What religion can do, and what political and legal institutions can do as well, is alter local and highly specific cases. And yet, they appear to have no influence at all on the intuitive system that operates more generally, and for unfamiliar cases.”

Here’s a good example to illustrate the point:

In a wide variety of studies, using different methods and populations, subjects consistently judge actions that cause harm as worse than omissions causing the same harm—a distinction referred to as the omission bias. In some studies, and in some populations, specific examples might not reveal the omission bias, but rarely does one observe a reversal such that omissions are judged more harshly than actions. For example, although the Netherlands passed a bill in 2001 making both active euthanasia (administering an overdose to an individual who is suffering) and passive euthanasia (allowing to die by terminating life support) legally permissible, the Dutch show as strong an omission bias as American subjects, despite the fact that in the USA, active euthanasia is illegal. This reveals that the law, as a formal moral system, can only provide specific guidelines for specific actions, but such knowledge fails to penetrate or alter our folk moral intuitions. According to this view, and as noted above, explicit religious commitment seems to be comparable to law, providing specific guidelines for specific actions, but dissociated from the system that mediates moral intuitions.

The authors hope we can use their paper as a jumping-off point to further explore the complex relationship between religion and morality, concluding:

It seems that in many cultures religious concepts and beliefs have become the standard way of conceptualizing moral intuitions. Although, as we have discussed, this link is not a necessary one, many people have become so accustomed to using it, that criticism targeted at religion is experienced as a fundamental threat to our moral existence.

Click below link to view the address:-

Archbishop’s Presidential Address

Did Jesus get involved in politics?

Christian Institute

This an interesting follow up to this post:-

Journalism:-

BBC head of religion and ethics disputes Sunday Telegraph article

Aaqil Ahmed, the BBC’s head of religion and ethics, has criticised the Sunday Telegraph for the way it presented his comments in an interview. In a BBC blog post yesterday, Ahmed writes that he had given an interview ahead of the Church Of England’s Synod debate and its motion on the issue of religious broadcasting on televisions:

The article appeared on Sunday under the headline “Church is ‘living in the past’ says BBC chief”. Great headline – but the truth lets the story down. The problem is: I am that BBC chief and I definitely didn’t say that. In fact there were a lot of things in the Sunday Telegraph article that surprised me when I read them.

(…)

The Sunday Telegraph article quotes me as saying that the BBC should not give Christianity preferential treatment. The question I was actually asked was whether minority faiths should be treated differently from other faiths – to which I replied that all faiths should be treated in the same way and that I don’t believe in treating any faith differently. It’s all a bit different when you put it in its proper context, isn’t it?

Click here to view the blog post.

Aaqil Ahmed has made his first major commissions since joining the broadcaster from Channel 4 last year:-

C21Media

In BBC1′s Are Christians Being Persecuted?, presenter Nicky Campbell will investigate what it means to be a Christian in Britain today. The doc will attempt to go behind the headlines to explore a number of high-profile legal cases, and examines the changing nature of how Christianity and Christians are viewed in society.

Meanwhile, The Day That Jesus Died will look at the meaning of Christ’s death on the cross, and features a series of interviews with leading Christian figures such as Rowan Williams and John Sentamu. BBC1 will also transmit Pope Benedict XVI’s traditional Easter message and blessing.

On sister network BBC2, Private Life Of An Easter Masterpiece explores renowned artwork The Descent From The Cross by Rogier van der Weyden, which recently became one of the first paintings to be featured on Google Earth.

Describing the slate as “eclectic” and “thought-provoking”, Ahmed, the BBC’s head of religion and ethics, and commissioning editor for TV, said: “Christian programming is the cornerstone of our output on television, radio and online.”

Ahmed joined the BBC in May last year, an appointment that caused a minor furore among right-wing newspapers in the UK, on account of the fact that the top BBC religion role had never before been held by a Muslim.