Continuing Anglicanism

Wikipedia has modified their page on Continuing Anglicanism and it makes for rather interesting reading:

The Continuing Anglican movement encompasses a number of Christian churches in various countries that profess Anglicanism while remaining outside the Anglican Communion. These churches generally believe that “traditional” forms of Anglican faith and worship have been unacceptably revised or abandoned within some Anglican Communion churches in recent decades. They claim, therefore, that they are “continuing” or preserving Anglicanism’s line of Apostolic Succession as well as historic Anglican belief and practice.

The modern “Continuing” movement principally dates to the 1977 Congress of St. Louis in the United States, at which meeting participants rejected the ordination of women and the changes that had been made in the Episcopal Church’s Book of Common Prayer.

Much more here.

 

Anglican Archbishop Accused of Bullying

Archbishop Dr Phillip Aspinall, who is the Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane and the Primate of the Anglican Church of Australia.

Lawyers for the Archbishop and the synod of Brisbane diocese have failed to get key elements of the sexual harassment and discrimination case thrown out of Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal…

His accuser says:

the Archbishop isolated her, failed to respond to her emails, declined to discuss important issues and was “bullying, condescending and interrogating”…

Rest here.

 

Bishop’s Luxury Goods Seized

The Assets Forfeiture Unit here in South Africa has raided the home of Bishop Samuel Banzana.

Port Elizabeth – R2.9 million worth of luxury goods have been seized from a retired bishop’s home in Port Elizabeth.

 

The Asset Forfeiture Unit raided Reverend Samuel Banzana’s home early this morning.

He’s under investigation for accepting kickbacks from a construction company he allegedly awarded tenders to, for RDP houses.

Banzana is the manager of the Mzingisi Trust, which was founded by ANC veteran Govan Mbeki.

The organisation builds RDP houses in the Port Elizabeth area.

The Eastern Cape High Court has granted the National Prosecuting Authority a protection order, effectively freezing the prominent bishop’s assets.

Among the goods seized were three luxury cars.

His home will also be seized.

The cleric has 14 days to respond to the allegations against him.

He is Bishop Ordinary of the Holy Catholic Church – Western Rite, the Diocese of the Umzi Wase Topiya.

 

Gay Man Takes Church to Court for Refusing to Ordain Him

This was bound to happen.

A homosexual man is taking the Anglican Bishop of Auckland to the Human Rights Tribunal after being rejected for training as a priest.

A hearing begins today following a complaint from the man, who says he feels discriminated against because of his sexuality.

It is understood the man – who is in a sexual relationship with his partner – has wanted to enter the church’s training programme for priests for years.

But after applying to enter after years of study, he was rejected by the Bishop Ross Bay, who approves entrants.

Bishop Bay told One News last night that he was simply following the church’s doctrines.

The man was rejected “by reason of the defendant not being chaste in terms of canons of the Anglican Church,” the bishop said.

That means that anyone wanting to become ordained needs to be in what the Anglican Church deems to be a chaste relationship – a marriage between a man and a woman or committed to a life of celibacy.

In a statement to the tribunal, the complainant says he “felt totally humiliated that I had spent six years of my life in study, for a process that I was not permitted to enter because I was a gay man and in a relationship”.

“My humiliation and disappointment continue to this day.”

He also claims that had he been unmarried but in a heterosexual relationship, he would have been allowed to train as a priest.

However, it is understood that is not the case and that Bishop Bay has rejected people in such relationships in the past.

A spokesman for the Anglican diocese of Auckland, Jayson Rhodes, said he could not get into details of the case.

“The best way for both sides of this to be heard is before the tribunal, rather than through the media.”

HT

Rowan Looks Happy…

And liberated these days:

In Cambridge.

 

Anglican-Catholic Commission Meets in Brazil

Vatican Radio:

Anglican-Catholic dialogue is back on the agenda this week as a team of ecumenical experts from both sides meet in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro from April 30th to May 6th.

This 3rd meeting of the current Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission will continue its work on the relationship between local and universal Church, as well as the way in which both communities respond to the most pressing ethical issues of our time.

To find out more about the meeting, Philippa Hitchen talked to Mgr Mark Langham from the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity who serves as Catholic co-secretary of ARCIC III…..

She also spoke, during the recent enthronement of the new Archbishop of Canterbury, to an Anglican member of ARCIC III, Bishop Christopher Hill who chairs the Church of England’s Council for Christian Unity. He told her that Pope Francis’ emphasis on his role as the Bishop of Rome is extremely encouraging for the whole ecumenical endeavor…

Listen: here (mp3).

 

NT Wright on Twitter

His Excellency, the (former) Lord Bishop Rt Rev Dr Prof NT Wright is Tweeting on Twitter.

He is now Professor of New Testament and Early Christian Studies at the University of St Andrews.

I noticed this video on his latest tweet: What is the gospel?

 

The Episcopal Consecration of Owen Rhys Williams

Bishop Chandler Holder Jones reports on it on his BLOG. Not me. So I suppose that makes it okay to repost?!

The Consecration of the Very Reverend Owen Rhys Williams to Bishop Suffragan of the Diocese of the Northeast in the Anglican Church of America took place on the Feast of Saint Mark the Evangelist, Thursday, April 25th 2013 at Trinity Anglican Church Pro-Cathedral, Rochester, New Hampshire…

 

Read the rest here.

 

Profile of Anglicans

British Religion in Numbers:

… The YouGov survey which Professor Linda Woodhead commissioned to inform the 2013 series of Westminster Faith Debates, and which BRIN has been reporting after each debate, is likely to prove a very valuable dataset for subsequent secondary analysis. To illustrate the point, Professor Woodhead, with statistical support from the Revd Professor Bernard Silverman, has used the poll (conducted online among 4,437 Britons aged 18 and over on 25-30 January 2013) to undertake a segmentation analysis of contemporary Anglicans (1,261 identified themselves as such in the survey). Her findings are presented in her article ‘”Nominals” are the Church’s Hidden Strength’ in the current issue (26 April 2013, p. 16) of the Church Times. This is only available online to subscribers of the newspaper.

The analysis proper, which forms the first part of the article, distinguishes four types of Anglicans:

Godfearing Churchgoers (5% of Anglicans) – These are Anglicans who attend church, are very certain in their belief in God, and who say that God is the main source of authority in their lives. They are also likely to score highly on other indicators of religiosity (such as prayer and Bible-reading) and to hold conservative views on many issues of personal morality, particularly sexuality (setting them apart with Baptists and Muslims rather than fellow Anglicans).

Mainstream Churchgoers (12% of Anglicans) – These have more in common with Non-Churchgoing Believers than with the Godfearers. Apart from their churchgoing, they differ in being a little more religious than Non-Churchgoing Believers on a number of measures and a little more morally conservative.

Non-Churchgoing Believers (50% of Anglicans) – These share a good many of the attributes of Mainstream Churchgoers, notwithstanding that they do not attend church. They all believe in God (although some prefer the word Spirit), and significant numbers practise religious or spiritual activities regularly. ‘These “nominals” are more than Anglican in name only: they believe, practise, and identify with Anglicanism.’

Non-Churchgoing Doubters (33% of Anglicans) – These Anglicans are also more than merely nominal. Only 15% are outright atheists, most being agnostic or unsure about God, and more than one-fifth claim to practise some religious or spiritual activity in private. They are the most morally permissive of the four groups.

The second half of the article is an impassioned – some may say occasionally idealized – plea for the Church of England to take more seriously non-churchgoing Anglicans in general, and Non-Churchgoing Believers in particular, rather than representing Godfearing Churchgoers as the ‘most real Anglicans’. Woodhead contends that the Church is in danger of becoming too clerical and congregationally-based, and of abandoning its sense of being a lay institution governed by monarch and Parliament, and responsible to the people.

The whole piece is here.

 

The Anglican Catholic

Clearly understanding (unlike some ecclesiastical blogophobes out there) the full value and tremendous potential of blogs, since having left the Traditional Anglican Communion for the Anglican Catholic Church, Fr Anthony Chadwick has started up a new blog simply entitled: The Anglican Catholic.

From the about page:

This blog is inspired by my previous and present experience of blogging and is intended to be a direct organ of communication of the Church to which I belong as a priest. My personal blog enables me to express myself more freely whilst upholding my promises as a cleric of this Church. This blog is designed to supplement existing organs of information such as the Church’s official websites…

Besides Fr Chadwick, the other contributors presently listed are Deacon Jonathan Munn and Fr Ed Bakker.