On Monday the High Court is to be asked to rule on whether Christians are "fit people" to adopt or foster children – or whether they will be excluded, regardless of the needs of children, from doing so because of the requirements of homosexual rights.
And there is media coverage of the IC/MC advert:
About 1,000 out of 13,000 CofE parishes have formally registered their objection to women priests working in their own churches.
And some 363 parishes - 23 per cent more than 10 years ago - are now so unhappy at the Church reforms that they are refusing to remain under the pastoral care of their local bishops who have ordained women as priests.
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The Archbishop of Canterbury says the problem is not whether or not to have women bishops, but what to do with those Anglicans who disapprove but don't want to leave the church. Read more of this 'the sky is falling even tho there are only 50 clerics talking about converting to the RC Church" story.
Liberal Anglicans today launched a campaign to fight guidelines they claim will make the church "more dogmatic".
Next month the general synod, the governing body of the Church of England, votes on whether to approve a constitution that will define how the communion stays together in the face of divisive issues such as sending clergy to another country without its agreement, electing openly homosexual priests or blessing same-sex unions.
But the groups, Inclusive Church and Modern Church, warn the covenant will "redefine Anglicanism". In full-page adverts, appearing this week in church publications, they say the covenant will make the communion "more dogmatic, inward looking and backward looking".
Their concerns stem from Martins' "involvement in the attempted separation of the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin from the Episcopal Church" when he was rector of St. John the Evangelist Church in Stockton (1994-2007), according to an Oct. 16 letter Lamb has sent to diocesan bishops and standing committees throughout the Episcopal Church.
The letter calls upon bishops with jurisdiction (diocesan bishops) and standing committees to withhold their consent to Martins' consecration.
Martins, 50, was rector of St. Anne's Church in Warsaw, in the Diocese of Northern Indiana, when he was elected bishop of Springfield on Sept. 18, 2010.
According to the canons (III.11.4) of the Episcopal Church, a majority of bishops exercising jurisdiction and diocesan standing committees must consent to a bishop-elect's ordination as bishop within 120 days of receiving notice of the election.
"Our concern is not about the electing process, but about the suitability of Daniel Martins to be ordained a bishop in the Episcopal Church," the letter states.
"The consent process, as mandated by our canons, is the only way the wider church can respond to the election of a person to be a bishop," the letter continues. "Accordingly, we would ask you to join us in withholding consent for Daniel Martins to become the Bishop of Springfield."
Martins, in a telephone interview from his office at St. Anne's Church in Warsaw, said he was "saddened by the letter. I wish the Diocese of San Joaquin had contacted me first with their concerns so we could have talked about it."
He said that the material cited in the letter, and also posted on the San Joaquin website, "represents an assortment of questionable documents … incomplete information taken out of context that leads to an erroneous conclusion."
That conclusion -- that he might consider leading the Springfield diocese to break with the Episcopal Church -- couldn't be farther from the truth, he said.
"Am I going to lead the diocese out of the Episcopal Church? No. No, that's not anywhere on my mind and nowhere on anybody in Springfield's mind," Martins said. "I wouldn't have allowed my name to go forward in the process for bishop if it was.
"My vocation is to be in the Episcopal Church and I'm quite clear about that. I've never felt more called to a ministry in my life. I've fallen in love with the Diocese of Springfield and I'm excited about the possibilities for ministry. I feel good about the work we will be able to do in the next 10 or 11 years.
"I'm a little mystified why people would think otherwise. I've had plenty of opportunities to leave. I could have stayed in San Joaquin and left."
The Rev. Christopher Ashmore, president of the Springfield Standing Committee, said he was satisfied with Martins' responses during the search process.
"I asked him point blank, 'do you have any intentions of trying to exit the Episcopal Church' and he said 'no, it's not my agenda,'" said Ashmore. He added that he's received inquiries from "a couple of standing committees expressing concerns" regarding the same subject.
"I don't know how the wider church will respond to this, but if it's a difficulty with standing committees or bishops my hope is that they will take time to inquire more deeply, to talk to us or Fr. Martins about it," Ashmore said.
"Consent is a part of who we are and what we do and it needs to be honored," he added. "But I would hope the way we go about doing that would reflect the fact that we're Christians and not out to accomplish particular ends in mind."
Martins said that some in the diocese of San Joaquin might have perceived he was part of Schofield's inner circle. "But, in fact he was very upset with me my last year in the diocese."
Lamb's letter was timed "before the consent process is in full swing" to give others a chance to review pertinent information about Martins. It referred readers to several documents posted on the San Joaquin diocese's website, which cite Martins' apparent participation in plans to separate the diocese from the Episcopal Church under the leadership of former bishop John-David Schofield.
"The Standing Committee and I contend Daniel Martins was instrumental to the process that led to first and second votes by the diocese to change the Constitutions and Canons that resulted in the failed attempt to unilaterally leave the Episcopal Church," according to the Oct. 16 letter.
Schofield, who had cited theological differences over ordaining women and gays, had been at odds with the direction of the Episcopal Church and the 2003 consecration of the Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson, Bishop of New Hampshire and the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church.
According to the letter, at the December 2006 diocesan convention Schofield cited Martins' participation in writing the amendment to the diocesan constitution and canons Schofield used to attempt to leave the Episcopal Church.
Martins said that while he did not overtly oppose Schofield's intentions to leave the Episcopal Church, he was attempting to "blunt and subvert them" by continuing to participate as much as possible on the diocesan standing committee and in other key roles, including as a General Convention deputy.
While acknowledging that he did participate in writing the amendment and voted for it on the first reading, Martins disputed that it led to the break with the Episcopal Church. He left before the convention was asked to vote on the second reading of the amendment, required for it to take effect.
"What led to the break with the Episcopal Church was a canonical change and I was not there for the canonical change," having left in 2007 to become St. Anne's rector.
On Dec. 8, 2007, a majority of congregations meeting at the diocesan convention, under the direction of Schofield, voted to disaffiliate from the Episcopal Church and to realign with the Argentina-based Anglican Province of the Southern Cone, but attempted to keep church property and assets.
A California Superior court ruled July 23, 2009, that a diocese cannot leave the Episcopal Church and that Lamb is the head of the continuing diocese. Schofield was ordered to relinquish all money, property and any assumed authority. That case is still being litigated.
A Fifth District Court of Appeal judge in Fresno heard oral arguments in the case on Oct. 20 and is expected to issue a ruling within 90 days, according to diocesan chancellor Mike Glass.
Lamb's Oct. 16 letter also cited excerpts from Martins blog, "Confessions of a Carioca" including a July 13, 2008, entry in which Martins said he did not recognize the constitutional foundation of the continuing diocese of San Joaquin, "nor the authority of Bishop Jerry Lamb.
"By any rational reading of the Constitution & Canons of the Episcopal Church, we're talking about a bogus diocese with a bogus bishop, though they have some impressive-looking stationery," Martins blogged.
"That they exist at all, and are able to maintain the chimera of legitimacy is a result only of the raw exercise of naked political power on the part of the presiding bishop. She is manifestly guilty of presentable offenses but it will never happen because the political calculus just isn't there."
Asked to comment on that blog, Martins said that while he bears no ill will toward Lamb, he believes that diocesan canons weren't strictly adhered to when reconstituting the Episcopal diocese after the split.
"The Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin is what it is and Bishop Lamb is the bishop. Beyond that, I've gotten over it.
"I say that with the realization that the presiding bishop will be my chief consecrator," he said Oct. 29. "I respect her personally, I respect the office, but I still think she made the wrong call. I would hope that in a church that prides itself on its democratic polity, that responsible public criticism of leaders done in a non-inflammatory manner should be within the bounds of acceptability."
The Rev. Kenneth Alexander, the Rev. Anthony Kowbeidu, the Rev. Brian Morgan and the Rev. Steve Wood are four of the five priests on staff at St. Andrew's Church in Mount Pleasant. They were removed on Oct. 21.
Wood, St. Andrew's Church rector, posted a copy of the notice Lawrence sent, as canonically required, to Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, the ecclesiastical authorities of the Episcopal Church and other officials. The document says that the priests were removed for reasons unrelated to their moral character.
During a vote on March 28, 722 ballots were cast by some members of St. Andrew's Church and 703 favored leaving the Episcopal Church, saying they intended to affiliate with the Diocese of the Holy Spirit, which is part of the Anglican Church in North America.
Episcopal Forum of South Carolina cited what they called the diocese's "lack of action" in response to St. Andrew's decision. The group asked the church's Executive Council and the House of Bishops to investigate that and other decisions of the diocese.
During council's recent meeting in Salt Lake City, the members drafted a letter to the group saying that the council and the presiding bishop are "committed to doing what we can to help the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina continue to participate fully in the life, work and mission of the Episcopal Church," but noting that "there are canonical limits to how her office and the Executive Council can intervene." Council member the Rev. Gay Jennings told the council that those limits prevent the investigation that the forum requested.
Reacting to the group's request and refuting the EFSC's charges, Lawrence compared his dispute with the Episcopal Church to a military battle and said the diocese was "engaged in a worldwide struggle for the soul of Anglicanism in the 21st century."
Kris Kobach has made a career out of spreading the gospel of anti-immigration. His is the mind behind Arizona’s immigration law that would require police to check the documents of people they suspect are in the country illegally. He has also written various community ordinances for towns across the country that would require landlords to check for citizenship before renting to tenants.
Now, as the Republican candidate for Kansas Secretary of State, he has turned his attention to the non-existent issue of voter fraud. MORE @ Religion Dispatches
A new poll from the Public Religion Research Institute reveals our new lesbian friends are among the plurality of Americans who say “that messages coming from places of worship are negative.” Forty-percent of those polled agreed that “these messages contribute ‘a lot’ to negative perceptions of gay and lesbian people.”
Those negative perceptions can have a life or death impact on LGBT people. With the recent rash of suicides among young people who have been bullied over their sexual orientation, or perceived sexual orientation, the messages coming from churches is extremely important.
Well, it’s over. Last week the six-hour, multi-million-dollar Frontline/American Experience production God in Americaaired on PBS. Now the debate over its merits begins.
Reviews from journalists have been mostly positive, although New York Timestelevision critic Mike Hale was not totally impressed. The show, he wrote, was “stuffed with facts and dates and figures” and sometimes strained “to find a way to tie them together.” He also called it “an unusually serious and, to use a word the producers would probably rather not see, intellectual endeavor for television, one that doesn’t make many compromises for short attention spans.”
Some professional historians and scholars of American religion, in contrast, criticized the show from the opposite direction. This is not a surprise. After all, when has the academic community ever been comfortable watching its territory invaded by an army of people lacking PhDs? On blogs, religion and history listserves, and chat rooms around the country, academics have labeled the series “oversimplified,” “truly bizarre,” “simplistic,” “intolerable,” “uneventful,” “underwhelming.” Essentially they are calling the series not enough of an “intellectual endeavor.” MORE @ Religion Dispatches
It is worth pointing out the sky has not fallen in because of the departure of more than 500 clergy since the 1990s, when women entered the priesthood, receiving payouts totalling £27.4m. Some of them even returned to the fold. In 2008, around 1,300 clergy threatened to leave if the general synod removed legal obstacles barring the ordination of women as bishops. Earlier this year, one traditionalist estimated the figure would be around 200.
This time, however, there is no financial compensation for exiting clergy and Catholic pensions and stipends are far less generous than Anglican ones. Nobody knows how the new enclave will work or what it will offer in terms of housing. There could also be protracted disputes over property ownership. Unsurprisingly, given the levels of uncertainty surrounding the Vatican offer, the number of serving clergy who have thus far announced their intention to convert is two.
Bishop Barry Clarke told delegates to the annual diocesan synod Oct. 15 that he will make a formal presentation to the diocesan council in January on "shared episcopal ministry." The proposal would permit parishes to have "episcopal oversight" from a fellow bishop. He emphasized that this episcopal ministry would be shared with his own.
"This does not mean that I am abdicating my responsibility as the diocesan bishop to those clergy and parishes," he said in his opening address to the synod. "I emphasize the fact that it is a 'shared' ministry with a fellow bishop. This is a pastoral response to a particular need at this time in our church. The clergy and parishes that may be involved in this shared episcopal ministry will still have to meet their full responsibility to live within the canons and the constitution of our diocese and of our church."
Shared episcopal ministry was proposed in the 2004 Windsor Report, produced by the Lambeth Commission on Communion as a way for the Anglican Communion to maintain unity amid differences over theological interpretations and human sexuality issues. The commission was trying, as Clarke put it, to find a pastoral solution and a "way forward for communities who may feel alienated when a diocese makes a decision to move in a particular direction that they may not feel comfortable with."
The idea also has received sympathetic consideration from the Anglican Church of Canada's House of Bishops. However, no other Canadian diocese has actually implemented such an arrangement.
The bishop said that in recent years discussions and debates over human sexuality and the place of gay, lesbian and transgender individuals in the church "have been challenging and at times, painful" and have caused tensions and disagreements and in some places, "have pushed people to leave our church over decisions we made..."
Clarke said he consulted with Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, and with Archbishop Claude Miller of Fredericton, metropolitan of the ecclesiastical province of Canada, which takes in much of Quebec and the Atlantic provinces, over requests he has had from some clergy and parishes in the Montreal diocese.
"I have met in prayer and in consultation with those members of the diocesan family who have made this request of me. It is my intent to move forward and honor their request."
The bishop's comments follow other moves toward a more open attitude to blessing same-gender marriages. In 2007, a resolution of the synod asked the bishop to authorize a liturgy for the blessing of duly solemnized and registered civil marriages, including those between same-gender couples, and some people in the Montreal diocese have been proposing shared episcopal ministry since then. A liturgy and protocol for implementing same-gender blessings were put in place last June and two such blessings have been quietly performed since then.
There was no formal debate on same-gender issues at the synod. However, in a brief but emotional moment, the bishop returned to Rev. Canon Joyce Sanchez, priest-in-charge of Christ Church Cathedral, the document that authorizes her to perform marriages as a priest. Sanchez, an assistant priest at the cathedral at the time, had surrendered it to the bishop in 2005 rather than be party to what she considered a system that discriminates against gays and lesbians.
"I pray that God will continue to challenge us to move forward with love and justice," she said after accepting the document from the bishop.
She later said the agreement followed a conversation with the bishop over her activity as the chair of the committee that drew up the protocol on same-gender blessings. The bishop pointed out that Sanchez would require her license to participate in carrying out the very policies she had helped to draft. Sanchez continues to believe that Anglican priests should be allowed to marry same-gender couples and not just bless their civil unions, but she thinks the new protocol is a step in the right direction.
Tens of thousands of people are estimated to have left the Finnish Evangelical-Lutheran Church because of antigay comments made during a televised debate last week.More
According to the Helsinki Times, “The number leaving increased sharply on 12 October following the broadcast of a debate programme focused on gay rights on Network 2 of the Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yle). By Monday 18 October, more than 24,000 people had left Finland’s Evangelical-Lutheran and Orthodox Churches.”
More than 5,000 people left the state church on Monday alone, likely a record for departures in a single day. Increasing numbers of middle-aged adults and women have joined the exodus.
"I feel that we may yet have to face the possibility of deeper divisions," Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams told The Hindu newspaper in an interview, released Wednesday.
The comment was made after he pointed out the complications posed by the recent ordination of a partnered lesbian in Los Angeles.
Though Anglican leaders were making progress in dialogue over the past couple of years, he said, "The decision of the American Church to go forward, as it has, with the ordination of a lesbian bishop has, I think, set us back."
MORETHERE ARE people who give religion a bad name. The ones who spout pious platitudes, yet their hearts are hard as granite.
Then there are those like Mary Chew. Chew is a true Christian.
The Oakland native's extraordinary story begins in 1990. Fresh out of college, she volunteered to travel to Haiti as part of a church mission to work at an orphanage called Christian Haitian Outreach.
The founder was doing the best she could with few resources. The orphans were far better off than the children starving and ragged in the streets. But the deprivation still broke Chew's heart. MORE @ Contra Costa Times
The question that flipped the Rev. Craig Chapman’s life was fired by a parishioner at the Episcopal church he led in Trenton, Mich.
“Are you gay?”
... Within six months [of answering yes], he was kicked out of the parish and in divorce proceedings with his wife. Later, he was temporarily barred from seeing his children. He landed in California and a year after that started an Anglican church, All Saints Parish, for gay, lesbian and straight people.
He’s still there in a rented space on Ventura’s Main Street, leading Sunday services for a congregation of about 50 people. Jewish and Buddhist communities share the space, holding their own services for gay and lesbian people and others.
“When I stand in the pulpit and preach about love and honesty, I can do it honestly,” said Chapman of messages he also once delivered to the parish in Michigan. “I always felt like I was lying to them.”
So to adopt the Covenant for the CofE would simply be to accept a new overlordship while continuing to pretend it is superior to it. It will make sure its officers are embedded in the operation of the Covenant so that nothing potentially embarrassing comes to the light of public debate. And thus it will ensure it still doesn’t have to think about its ecclesiology - what principles - actually and ideally - underlie, predispose and can be used to judge the words, structures and action of the Church of England?
It was at his insistence that I made my Gay Uganda blog as anonymous as possible. His was always the voice of caution: wait, don't do that, don't expose yourself, remember that it is no longer you alone.
And, he was correct. I did heed his voice. Because, for a gay Ugandan, life is not safe. Being known to be gay is tough. It is a life of reckless fear, not courage. We do what we do, not because we can, but because there is no other option. From the very first inkling of our sexuality, we learn to hide. And we do hide.
In fact, we gay Ugandans hide so well, and are gracefully camouflaged, that fellow Ugandans frequently ask themselves who the "evil gays" are. Of course, we are their kin. But they don't believe their brothers, sisters, cousins, relatives can be the "evil gays".
In the beginning, I think it was the religious questions that led to my activism. I was baptised into an Anglican family. While in high school, round about the time that I realised my sexuality, I became an evangelical Christian.
But being gay in Uganda and Christian is a real challenge. Ugandans are highly religious and, coming out to myself later, I knew I couldn't reconcile my faith and sexuality. I decided to repudiate faith. But then I went further and became angry at the faith as shown in Uganda. And why not?
The way I see it, there are three options: (1) Frau Merkel’s nostalgia for some monoculture where we all look and sound the same; (2) my commitment to diversity, which may entail a limited retreat from the language of the common good; and (3) Professor Hauerwas’s view that we can have both diversity and vibrant public morality, if we accept that the latter comes with boisterous disagreement.
I would love no. 3 above to be possible. I, too, love a good scrap, and sometimes we ought to be having more scraps about public morality. But, deep in Muslim Whitechapel, a scrap about the common good looks too close to real fighting to me. Agonistic pluralism is all very well in the university (I know: it’s a cheap shot), but it is dangerous in a genuinely diverse society.
A turning-point was the address to both Houses of Parliament in Westminster Hall. It wasn't just that his audience applauded him after his speech as he walked through the historic building. This was remarkable enough, given the historic roots of a part of parliamentarianism in the rejection of popery. But the friendly gesture was not the distinguishing note of the occasion – after all, the Queen herself, welcoming him to Scotland had spoken of being "united in conviction" with him about the freedom to worship being "at the core of our tolerant and democratic society".
No, the decisive moment at Westminster Hall was when the Pope denied for the Church the role of supplying "the objective norms governing right action", let alone proposing "concrete political solutions". The latter point should have been clear, since Catholics sit with conviction on both sides of the House of Commons. But it might have been thought that the Church ought to supply the moral underpinning.
A dozen Christian and Jewish clergy offered support Wednesday for a U.S. District Court ruling in August that found California’s ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. The case is now before the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
At a Los Angeles news conference, the group said it planned to file an amicus brief in support of Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision to strike down Proposition 8, the 2008 initiative that banned gay marriage. The judge said the measure violated due process and equal protection for gays and lesbians.
Representatives from the Los Angeles Episcopal diocese, the United Church of Christ, the Progressive Jewish Alliance and other liberal religious groups spoke of marriage equality as part of religious freedom Wednesday in the gathering at the St. Paul Cathedral Center, the Episcopal diocese headquarters.
“It is not an issue of legal matters, it’s an issue of faith,” said the Rt. Rev. J. Jon Bruno, the Episcopal bishop of Los Angeles.
MOREHowever, a documented strength of African American families is their close kinship ties that provide safe harbor from the racist seas of the dominant culture. Loving, strong families can buffer the impacts of oppression on its members. In addition, families are the first places where children learn ways to cope and thrive in spite of prejudice and discrimination. So for gay and lesbian youth who are black, the thought of losing this vital resource is particularly devastating.
In the study described in the book: Coming Out, Coming Home: Helping Families Adjust to a Gay or Lesbian Child (www.comingoutcominghome.com), the experiences of white and black families were often similar. When they realized they were gay, African American youth, like their white counterparts distanced themselves from their parents for self-protection and to avoid conflict. Both white and African American parents felt guilty when they first learned their children were gay. Furthermore, as time passed many black and white families experienced improvements in their family relationships, fueled by mutually reinforcing parent-child interactions.
However, black parents were less likely than their white counterparts to report that they mourned the loss of a normal life for their children when they initially learned they were gay. MORE
Uganda's Ethics and Integrity Minister James Nsaba Butoro says that stories of persecution of gays and lesbians in his country are lies. He also expects the infamous "kill-the-gays" bill to pass Uganda's legislature "in due course."
A tabloid newspaper called "The Rolling Stone" (not related to the US publication) has ceased publication, not because it printed a list a people they said were gay or lesbian under the banner "Hang Them High" but because the publishers did not secure the proper permits. As soon as it get those permits, the presses will roll again. MORE
The 161st Convention of the Episcopal Diocese of California came to a close shortly after 5 p. ... Read more
I think it’s well-known that in the Church of England there is a very significant minority of people who believe that the Church of England and the Anglican Churches generally should not take a large step like ordaining women bishops without more consultation with, or sensitivity to, the other great Churches – the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church.
I think I’ll be able to be clearer about that after the next primates’ meeting. But at the moment I couldn’t say I felt completely optimistic about that. I feel that we may yet have to face the possibility of deeper divisions. I don’t at all like, or want to encourage, the idea of a multi-tier organisation. But that would, in my mind, be preferable to complete chaos and fragmentation. It’s about agreeing what we could do together.
Naturally, the Episcopal Church has an official policy statement demanding "immigration equality" for same-sex partners, ratified at the denomination's General Convention last year. That resolution denounced as an "outrageous injustice" the lack of recognition by federal immigration law for same-sex couples, when "similarly situated heterosexual immigrants are free to marry at any time." Presciently, the Episcopalians even specifically endorsed the Uniting American Families Act, of which the Leahy/Menendez legislation is the latest incarnation. "By supporting this civil rights legislation, the Episcopal Church can add a Christian voice to those demanding that all citizens be treated equally under U.S. immigration laws," the Episcopal resolution insisted."
 | Sincerely, Rea Carey, Executive Director National Gay and Lesbian Task Force |
