Sea Change in the Anglican Communion; Episcopal Church down 24% in ten years

30 Oct 2013
By the Rev. Prof. Stephen Noll

Excerpt:
The Lambeth Resolution led to a decade of strife within the Communion as the North Americans flatly rejected its norm and now are on the brink of providing official same-sex marriage rites. In the UK, same-sex marriage has now been signed into law by the Queen, and the Prime Minister vows to export it to the  Commonwealth partners. While the Church of England has not approved same-sex marriage, the Archbishop of Canterbury argues that same-sex civil unions are a neglected moral obligation: “It is clearly essential that stable and faithful same sex relationships should, where those involved want it, be recognised and supported with as much dignity and the same legal effect as marriage” (Speech in House of Lords, 3 June 2013).

But isn’t sex outside marriage “incompatible with Scripture” (1998 Lambeth Resolution I.10; cf. Resolutions III.1 and III.5)? Indeed the larger question underlying the sexuality debate entails the authority of the Bible. To which question Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori replies, channeling her inner Humpty Dumpty: “When I use the Word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” Or so it seems, as Bishop Schori interprets St. Paul’s exorcism of a slave girl, oppressed by demonic and human masters (Acts 16:16-18):

Paul can’t abide something he won’t see as beautiful or holy, so he tries to destroy it. It gets him thrown in prison. That’s pretty much where he’s put himself by his own refusal to recognize that she, too, shares in God’s nature, just as much as he does – maybe more so!

 

Permit me, as a biblical scholar and defrocked (by TEC) priest, to protest: that an apostolic leader can twist the text of Scripture and rebuke St. Paul as she does is emblematic of the false Gospel rampant in her church, and that she remains unrebuked by and in good standing with her elders in the Communion is emblematic of the utter dysfunction of that body. In what sense can one call it a “Communion” when such denial of the faith passes for normal? the rest

Chris Sugden: 'Proud to be at GAFCON'
Those who attended GAFCON in Nairobi have begun reporting back...

Episcopal Church down 24% in ten years

Gafcon looks to the future
AT THE second Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON), held this week in Nairobi, the General Secretary of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, the Rt Revd Dr Peter Jensen, said that the "future" of Anglicanism had "arrived" - and it was GAFCON.

The sentiment was apparently shared by most of the 1352 delegates from 40 countries, including more than 100 from the UK. Women clerics from Africa and the United States worshipped with conservative Evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics (Comment, 18 October).

"We believe the apostolic faith," Dr Jensen said in the opening session, "and we do not believe the faith of those who contradict the Bible, and who deny the uniqueness and supremacy of Christ."...