| "For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus" - Titus 2:11-13 NASB
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Message from Bishop David Anderson
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Bishop Anderson
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Beloved in Christ, Two weeks ago I mentioned that last week I would be having surgery. Happily, the surgery went very well, and within four days I was off all of the surgery-related medications and able to move about quite well. Full recovery will take a few more weeks, but I want to thank all of my readers and intercessors who lifted me and the surgery up in prayer. I do believe that your prayers made a real and significant difference. This week there is news from the UK that the Archbishop of Canterbury might step down as early as next year and return to academia. I'm not sure how I feel about that. From a competency point of view, he has been in over his head as both Primate of All England and as "Primus inter pares" of the Anglican Communion. These jobs require a package of organizational and people skills that Dr. Williams doesn't have, and quite frankly most people don't have. It is my belief that such skills are best found in rectors of larger congregations who have already demonstrated their ability, and choosing bishops from these ranks at least ensures that competent leadership and organizational skills will be present among the bishops. Both liberal and conservative church members have hoped that Dr. Williams would step up to the plate and act, though each group has a different desired outcome in mind. It has been clear for some time, actually most of his Arch Primacy, that he wasn't the man for the job, and it has been painful for everyone as he has misused the instruments of the Communion and refused to address the issue of the American Episcopal Church's deliberate defiance of the Communion's theology, norms and process. His writings seemed to indicate a personal theology and sexual agenda for the church not that much different from TEC Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori's. What was different, and seemed to anger him was that TEC Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold, then after him, Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori were so brazen and defiant about how these changes were pushed forward, in contrast to his model of the British Empire/Commonwealth, where things were accomplished more slowly and in a decidedly more "British" manner. Even now, while he dithers about whether to go public and put his name on an announcement of early retirement, TEC under the command of Jefferts Schori is actively engaging dioceses and provinces of the Communion in ways that build TEC ties at the expense of ties to Canterbury.
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As I mentioned once previously, at the Anglican Consultative Council held some years ago in Nottingham, England (which the American Anglican Council attended in an unofficial capacity to gather information and do advocacy work), Dr. Williams sent a representative to speak with me privately and he asked me what our view of Dr. Williams was. In those days, there was still a glimmer of hope that he might do the right thing for the right reason, and so I gave him the benefit of the doubt, saying that in England's darkest season, when facing the threat of war on the continent, Neville Chamberlain was the Prime Minister, and he failed to be the leader that the nation needed at that time. He was a Peace Chief in a time of war. Then Winston Churchill became Prime Minister and served the nation with excellence and helped to win the war; he was the man the nation needed for that day.
I told Rowan's representative that the Church of England and all of the Communion needed an Archbishop of Canterbury who could be a Winston Churchill, not a Neville Chamberlain, and it was up to Dr. Williams to decide which he wanted to be, and to act accordingly. Strangely, I never heard back from either of them about this.
The problem with Dr. Williams stepping down and returning to academia is twofold. First, who will replace him, another Neville Chamberlain, or a new Winston Churchill? The Anglican Communion is far weaker today because of Dr. Williams' leadership. Care needs to be taken that a competent and theologically orthodox Archbishop is chosen. Tied to this is the arcane manner of the selection. Tony Blair picked Rowan Williams, the monarch appointed, and in due time Mr. Blair helped to further torpedo orthodox Christians' life in the UK and then became a Roman Catholic. As Nelson Jones wrote in the New Statesman blog, "Nowhere else in the field of archiepiscopal appointments is so much power surrendered by so many to so few." Shouldn't there be some semblance of the church picking its own bishops, archbishops, etc. rather than either a political appointment or a meeting of faceless people in a dark room deciding what is best for the church? In the reality of a worldwide communion, shouldn't the Primates of the Communion elect one of their own to sit as Chair and "Primus inter pares?"
The second problem with Dr. Williams returning to academia is what he will teach and write. His mindset on some issues such as sexuality is far to the left of orthodox teaching. Perhaps the saving grace is that he writes in such a complex and obscure manner that, for many of us, any error in his teaching will be muted by the difficulty in unpacking what he actually meant. Charles Raven, writing for Anglican SPREAD, has commented on a Williams paper delivered at the 1998 Lambeth Conference entitled 'On Making Moral Decisions' and his words are quite telling: "The strategy behind Williams' address was not to promote his views on homosexuality directly, but to reflect on the process by which moral decisions in general should be made - not so much to play the game, so to speak, as the more ambitious task of actually trying to define what the playing field should look like. And this is the enduring significance of his address thirteen years later as he continues to promote 'indaba' and the 'listening process' strategies which focus on the process of decision making, while all the time kicking the can down the road in the hope that the institutionally messy consequences of closure can be avoided." Focusing everyone on listening and talking about the process rather than the actual moral issues themselves is a way to divert attention and buy time for the activists to quietly change things politically and flank the church on moral consequences. This is a classic device, and yet it continues to work time after time, with the fly continuing to sit at the spider's table. Rowan would give up his Archbishop's table in favor of having more students and time to 'indaba' us all to death.
O Lord, we need a godly and wise and competent leader for the Communion who would teach and restore both orthodox doctrine and practice throughout your Anglican Communion. Amen
The Rt. Rev. David C. Anderson, Sr.
President and CEO, American Anglican Council
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Chaplain's Corner
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By The Rev. Canon Phil Ashey, J.D. Chief Operating and Development Officer, American Anglican Council  | |
Canon Ashey
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Dear Friends in Christ, Last week I had the privilege of celebrating the investiture of Bishop John Guernsey as the first bishop of the new ACNA Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic. In this week's Anglican Perspective video, I describe how that wonderful service of Investiture highlights some of the qualities that are attracting many to the Anglican expression of Christianity. But I'd also like to share an important moment we had before the service, in the Truro Chapel. In the "standing room only" crowd, there were representatives of the leadership teams from the Anglican District of Virginia (ADV), and the new Anglican Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic (DOMA). It was a time to literally move from the temporary life-boat of the ADV to the more permanent ship of the ACNA, this new diocese and its new bishop. What struck me was both the joy and the grace of the transition. Bishop Martyn Minns initially presided over the ADV, which was birthed in 2006 to gather together Virginia Anglicans leaving TEC under the temporary oversight of Uganda and Nigeria. +Martyn described with great humor and grace the history of the ADV, how it had served its purpose, expressed appreciation for Chairman Jim Oakes and other ADV leaders, and then called for the vote to conclude all business of the ADV. All delegates present responded with a unanimous acclamation. Then +John Guernsey stood up as the new bishop of DOMA to express his thanks, with equal humor and grace, to all those who had helped bring Virginia Anglicans to this great day. And with an equally hearty acclamation, all delegates unanimously affirmed the resolution to open the first Synod of the Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic.
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Photo courtesy of Joy Gwaltney
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Not only was this a wonderful example of how our leaders can and do work together
with humility and grace, it is a visible sign of our maturing as Anglicans. We are now leaving the lifeboats to create new and more permanent missional structures that Anglicans in our larger family will recognize. The geographical Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic will very soon become one of the larger dioceses in the Anglican Church in North America with 35 congregations already, and more on the way. Virginia Anglicans, together with Anglicans all across North America, are demonstrating the very "ecclesial density" that detractors have said we lack - unified structures that draw us together in mission, unified governance and a shared identity under our Fundamental Declarations (Article I, ACNA Constitution) and the Jerusalem Declaration. We are Anglican members of a global fellowship of confessing Anglicans, committed to fulfilling Christ's Great Commission.
We saw the global fellowship of confessing and missional Anglicans at work this week in the Communique of the Global South Primates during their recent visit to China. The American Anglican Council warmly welcomes and affirms their Communique. Although we have some questions about the human rights of Chinese Christians who were forbidden by their government to attend the recent Lausanne Conference on World Evangelization in Capetown, we share the Primates' joy at the exponential growth of the church in China.
The Primates noted the fact that "the majority of Anglicans are found no longer in the west, but in churches in Africa, Asia and Latin America that are firmly committed to our historic faith and order." By contrast, they note the erosion of apostolic and biblical faith and order among Anglicans in the west, which began with "the undermining of Scriptural authority and two millennia of church tradition." They go on to make a very significant statement in paragraph 13:
"We are wholeheartedly committed to the unity of Anglican Communion and recognize the importance of the historic See of Canterbury. Sadly, however, the Anglican Communion's Instruments of Unity have become dysfunctional and no longer have the ecclesial and moral authority to hold the Communion together." (Emphasis added)
Why is this significant? Because one of the Anglican Communion's "Instruments of Unity" is the historic See of Canterbury! In other words, while ++Canterbury is important, he/it "no longer [has] the ecclesial and moral authority to hold the Communion together." For this reason, in paragraph 15 of the Communique, the Primates' reaffirm their commitment to uphold the apostolic faith and traditions that define us as Anglicans - which, in turn, compels them to "adopt a proactive stance with respect to our common mission and witness." In keeping with this "proactive stance," the Anglican Primates of the Global South announced a Missions Consultation with the theme "Decade of Mission and Networking" as proposed in the Fourth South-to-South Encounter, "as a unifying vocational platform on which we realize and build up our common life and witness. Orthodox Anglican churches and groups will be invited to join hands with us in missions."
We applaud this leadership initiative by the Global South Primates. Along with other leadership events planned by the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans in 2012 and 2013, we believe this will refocus Anglicans everywhere on Christ's Great Commission - reaching people everywhere with the transforming love of Jesus Christ, bringing lost and secular people into an eternal relationship with Jesus Christ, and sharing the truth in God's word as revealed in Holy Scripture about how we may live our lives as Jesus would - in a church that is undeterred by false gospels.
Mainstream, confessing and missional Anglicans are maturing, no longer captive to the blandishments and agendas of a false gospel, even when it is being promoted by the historic See of Canterbury and the Anglican Communion Office. We pray that the Global South Primates and the leadership of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans will work together as they schedule these events so that orthodox, confessing Anglicans everywhere may participate together in this great missional realignment of Anglicanism!
Yours in Christ, Phil+ Back to Top
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Anglican Perspective
| This week, Canon Ashey answers the question, "Why do you choose to be an Anglican follower of Jesus?"
See how other Anglicans are answering this question in the "Why Anglicanism" booklet. 
View this week's episode here.
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| Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams set to quit next year | Source: Telegraph
September 10, 2011
By Jonathan Wynne-Jones
The Archbishop of Canterbury is planning to resign next year, nearly a decade before he is due to step down, it can be revealed.
Dr Rowan Williams is understood to have told friends he is ready to quit the highest office in the Church of England to pursue a life in academia. The news will trigger intense plotting behind the scenes over who should succeed the 61-year-old
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Dr Williams
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archbishop, who is not required to retire until he is 70.
Bishops have privately been arguing for Dr Williams to stand down, with the Rt Rev Richard Chartres, the Bishop of London, telling clergy he should give someone else a chance after nearly ten years in the post.
Lambeth Palace would not be drawn into confirming or denying whether the archbishop will be leaving next year. A spokesman would only say: "We would never comment on this matter."
Sources close to the archbishop say he will leave after the Queen's Diamond Jubilee next June and having seen the Church finally pass legislation to allow women to become bishops.
It is understood that Trinity College, Cambridge, is preparing to create a professorship for Dr Williams, who studied theology and was a chaplain at the university.
After presiding over one of the most turbulent periods in the Church's history, the archbishop has told friends he would like to give his successor adequate time to prepare for the next Lambeth Conference - the summit of Anglican bishops held once every decade....
Next year will mark the tenth anniversary of Dr Williams's promotion to Canterbury, which would represent a similar period in office to his predecessor, Lord Carey of Clifton....
The rest of the article may be found here.
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| Communique of Global South Primates during visit to China | Source: Anglican Mainstream
September 14, 2011
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Global South Primates meeting in China
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1. At the kind invitation of His Excellency Mr. Wang Zuoan, Minister for the StateAdministration for Religious Affairs (SARA) of the People's Republic of China, following his visit to some African provinces earlier this year, we, the Primates of the Global South of the Anglican Communion, visited China from 30 August to 10 September 2011. It is with regret that a few other Primates were unable to be with us due to urgent matters that require their attention.
2. We wish to express our deep appreciation for the cordial hospitality extended to us by Mr. Wang, the staff of SARA and the religious affairs authorities of Jiangsu Province and the cities of Beijing, Chongqing, Nanjing, Suzhou and Shanghai. This visit is opening the way for greater cooperation between China and the countries we represent, especially in the areas of church development, social services and commercial activity....
11. In our reflections, we found that our Anglican Communion has also undergone a tremendous transformation in recent decades. Today, the majority of Anglicans are found no longer in the west, but in churches in Africa, Asia and Latin America that are firmly committed to our historic faith and order.
12. At the same time, it grieves us deeply to observe many Anglican churches in the west yielding to secular pressure to allow unacceptable practices in the name of human rights and equality. Beginning with the undermining of Scriptural authority and two millennia of church tradition, the erosion of orthodoxy has gone as far as the ordination and consecration of active gay and lesbian clergy and bishops, and the development of liturgies for same-sex marriage.
13. We are wholeheartedly committed to the unity of Anglican Communion and recognize the importance of the historic See of Canterbury. Sadly, however, the Anglican Communion's Instruments of Unity have become dysfunctional and no longer have the ecclesial and moral authority to hold the Communion together. For instance:
13.1. It was regrettable that the Lambeth Conference 2008 was designed not to make any resolutions that would have helped to resolve the crisis facing the Communion.
13.2. The Primates' Meeting in Dublin in January 2011 was planned without prior consultation with the Primates in regard to the agenda. There was no commitment to follow through the recommendations of previous Primates' Meetings. The responsibility given by all bishops at the 1988 and 1998 Lambeth Conferences for the Primates' Meeting to "exercise an enhanced responsibility in offering guidance on doctrinal, moral and pastoral matters" seems to have been completely set aside.
13.3. The Anglican Consultative Council (ACC), the Anglican Communion Standing Committee, and Communion-level commissions such as the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order (IASCUFO) and the Anglican Communion Liturgical Commission no longer reflect the common mind of the churches of the Communion because many members from the Global South can no longer with good conscience attend these meetings as issues that are aggravating and tearing the fabric of the Communion are being ignored....
The rest of the Communique may be found here.
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| Homosexual activists seek to cut off PayPal accounts of pro-family organizations | Source: LifesiteNews
September 15, 2011
by Matthew Cullinan Hoffman
Homosexual activists are pressuring PayPal to cut off the accounts of pro-family Christian organizations that oppose the homosexual political agenda and uphold sexual morality, and PayPal is showing signs that it may capitulate to their demands.
The homosexual organization behind the effort, All Out, claims that such organizations as Tradition, Family, and Property, and Americans for Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH), as well as pro-family Christian activist Julio Severo, promote "hate, violence, and intolerance" and are "extremist."
The two organizations are mainstream pro-family, Christian groups that reject hatred of homosexuals but uphold traditional sexual morality and oppose legal privileges for homosexuals. Julio Severo, who is also a LifeSiteNews.com translator, is recognized widely in Brazil as one of the country's most prominent pro-life and pro-family activists; he teaches love of homosexuals while opposing the gay political agenda.
The petition is aimed at the three groups, along with the extremist Dove World Outreach Ministries, which provoked riots in Islamic countries recently when it threatened to burn the Koran, in an apparent attempt to imply a similarity between the groups....
The rest of the article may be found here. 
To sign a petition urging Paypal to keep the accounts of the pro-family groups, click here. To donate $10 to the American Anglican Council via PayPal click the button to the right.
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| If It Feels Right... | Source: New York Times
September 12, 2011
By David Brooks
During the summer of 2008, the eminent Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith led a research team that conducted in-depth interviews with 230 young adults from across America. The interviews were part of a larger study that Smith, Kari Christoffersen, Hilary Davidson, Patricia Snell Herzog and others have been conducting on the state of America's youth.
Smith and company asked about the young people's moral lives, and the results are depressing. It's not so much that these young Americans are living lives of sin and debauchery, at least no more than you'd expect from 18- to 23-year-olds. What's disheartening is how bad they are at thinking and talking about moral issues.
The interviewers asked open-ended questions about right and wrong, moral dilemmas and the meaning of life. In the rambling answers, which Smith and company recount in a new book, "Lost in Transition," you see the young people groping to say anything sensible on these matters. But they just don't have the categories or vocabulary to do so.
When asked to describe a moral dilemma they had faced, two-thirds of the young people either couldn't answer the question or described problems that are not moral at all, like whether they could afford to rent a certain apartment or whether they had enough quarters to feed the meter at a parking spot.
"Not many of them have previously given much or any thought to many of the kinds of questions about morality that we asked," Smith and his co-authors write. When asked about wrong or evil, they could generally agree that rape and murder are wrong. But, aside from these extreme cases, moral thinking didn't enter the picture, even when considering things like drunken driving, cheating in school or cheating on a partner. "I don't really deal with right and wrong that often," is how one interviewee put it.
The default position, which most of them came back to again and again, is that moral choices are just a matter of individual taste. "It's personal," the respondents typically said. "It's up to the individual. Who am I to say?"...
Smith and company found an atmosphere of extreme moral individualism - of relativism and nonjudgmentalism. Again, this doesn't mean that America's young people are immoral. Far from it. But, Smith and company emphasize, they have not been given the resources - by schools, institutions and families - to cultivate their moral intuitions, to think more broadly about moral obligations, to check behaviors that may be degrading. In this way, the study says more about adult America than youthful America....
The rest of the article may be found here.
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| ARDF celebrates anniversary this month | Source: ACNA
September 14, 2011
This September, the Anglican Relief and Development Fund (ARDF) is celebrating seven years of providing aid for the least among us. To date, the organization has delivered over $4.8 million in funding for over 105 relief and development projects and impacted people in 32 countries, while strengthening partnerships with Anglicans across the globe. ARDF has been embraced as the official relief and development arm of the Anglican Church in North America with a body of International Trustees, including seven Anglican Primates.
But none of ARDF's work, whether it's providing aid in the midst of a natural disaster or training poor farmers in South Sudan, would be possible if it weren't for the Lord's leading and the generosity of His people.
An Organization on a Mission
The mission of ARDF is twofold and focuses on bringing about real life change to the suffering and the poor in some of the most challenging areas in the Anglican Communion. ARDF provides effective relief and development assistance for high-impact projects with measurable transformation results.
Many Christian aid groups provide excellent services, but shy away from connecting the aid back to the Gospel. ARDF specifically includes an evangelism component in every project to expand God's Kingdom....
The rest of the article may be found here.
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| New Anglican diocese: St. Andrew's rector named vicar general for churches in Carolinas | Source: Post and Courier
September 11, 2011
By Adam Parker
Since it severed ties with the Episcopal Church and the Diocese of South Carolina, St. Andrew's Church-Mount Pleasant has grown. And now it has secured a central role in a new diocese in formation, part of the Anglican Church in North America.
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Rev. Wood
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The Rev. Steve Wood, rector of St. Andrew's, was appointed vicar general of the not-yet-official Diocese of the Carolinas, which includes eight churches in North and South Carolina and one more that's still being established.
ACNA was started in 2008 at the invitation of the Global Anglican Future Conference and formally recognized by its Anglican leaders in April 2009. ACNA is a province in formation that brings together Anglicans in the U.S. and Canada, many of whom have left the Episcopal Church and Anglican Church of Canada in recent years because of theological differences over homosexuality, the requirements for salvation, the authority of Scripture and other issues.
The Most Rev. Robert Duncan is the archbishop of ACNA and bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh. ACNA includes nearly 700 congregations and close to 300 ministry partner congregations in 21 dioceses. Two more regional governing bodies, the dioceses of the Carolinas and the Southwest, soon will join them.
As vicar general, Wood is charged by Duncan with setting up the diocese.
Just as a mission church has a vicar, so too does a mission diocese, Wood said. A bishop will be elected once it's fully formed.
"My fundamental responsibility is to develop the organizational and administrative components of the diocese," Wood said.
The goal is to draft the canons of the diocese, search for a bishop and finish establishing the administrative structure by June 2012, when ACNA's provincial council next meets, he said....
The rest of the article may be found here.
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