"Shall the one who contends with the Almighty correct Him?" Job 40:2a NKJV 
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Message from Bishop David Anderson
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Bishop Anderson
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Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ Jesus, The dust from the American Episcopal Church's (TEC) General Convention is settling, and all the participants have returned home. Now some TEC clergy and laity are asking questions about exactly what transpired. One of the significant events was the provision for blessing same-sex couples in church using an officially approved "provisional" liturgy. We all knew that the slippery slope of theological liberalism would carry TEC ultimately to this point and beyond, and now they are here. Some Episcopal dioceses are already authorizing clergy to proceed with, not same-sex blessings, but actual liturgical marriage ceremonies, as if two men or two women could actually be joined together in the eyes of God in a marriage. The ability of individuals, or even a gathering of individuals, to deceive themselves into thinking that what they are doing is not only right, but that God approves it - wait! God might even be the author of it! - is apparently limitless. Another over the top action that was taken was the inclusion of transgendered people into those who must be considered for all aspects of the church's offices, orders, and positions, including priests and, I suppose, bishops. Instead of viewing this kind of confusion as a mental disorder, they have elevated it to a protected class with rights and privileges. This may also mean that the church's insurance coverage will need to pay for clergy to remove body parts they feel don't really belong to them, and fabricate new body parts according to the gender they feel certain God really intended them to be. How sad that God apparently made these mistakes in giving people gender assignments! So we see an appropriation of God's blessing upon whatever "progressive" cause is currently trendy, and they call this Christianity, and following Jesus? The next bridge to be taken by the revisionists will be the adult-youth sexual relationship, since if it really seems right to the individual, how can anyone judge them? They aren't ill, and they aren't sinning, they are experiencing the love of God in new ways that should be received and welcomed as the other deceptions have been - this or similar language will be how they will express it. This issue is coming next, now that transgenderism has been normalized in TEC.
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Before orthodox Anglicans start to feel smug about the moral and theological failures of TEC, we should realize that sin is an elusive and sly opponent to those of faith. Scripture refers to Satan as a roaring lion, prowling about looking for whom he can devour. Our enemy is Satan himself, and he will not be satisfied with devouring TEC and other welcoming churches; he looks for any foothold, any crack or crevice where he can gain a foothold to attack those who stand in faith for Almighty God.
I would say that we in the orthodox Anglican church must be in mutual submission to one another and let our doings have a transparency that allows others to see not only our works but our intentions as well. Sin, like mildew on a hot summer evening in the South, can show up almost anywhere or everywhere. The issues that brought the ACNA forth out of TEC were fairly simple: the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as the Savior of the world and the authority of Holy Scripture to speak truth into our lives and be a source of knowledge and discipline. Out of these two issues and how one lives into them flow the decisions and repercussions, into one river of faith or another. One river flows in the channel of the historic Christian Church, and the other one cuts a new channel across unknown land with a different destination. For me and my house, though we will from time to time sin and fail, we will believe and live into the historic faith and discipline of the Christian faith, as brought to us by our spiritual mothers and fathers, often at significant personal cost. Yes, from time to time the old DNA of sin and former churches' insane proclivities will try to recapture us, but by the grace, mercy and providence of our Lord Jesus, may we be called to account, repent, be redirected and restored and kept on the narrow track of a faithful, disciplined life in Jesus.
If we look back, it should only be to see the reality of the devouring, roaring lion, and then to look forward and run to the Lion of Judah, Jesus himself.
Blessings and Peace in him whom we serve,
The Rt. Rev. David C. Anderson, Sr.
President and CEO, American Anglican Council
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The Chaplain's Corner
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By The Rev. Canon Phil Ashey
Chief Operating and Development Officer, American Anglican Council
Spiritual Realities require Spiritual Resources - Part 2
Dear friends in Christ,
In the aftermath of TEC's General Convention 2012, three important articles came out in the secular media - one in the Wall Street Journal, one in the New York Times, and one from NBC News - questioning the future of The Episcopal Church in the wake of the approval of rites for same-sex blessings and more. The response from leaders in TEC has been ferocious, with some even going so far as to say that those "conservatives" who don't like it should leave, with such derogatory comments as "don't let your pain make you stupid to the facts." The misstatements of fact by leaders in TEC about the consequences of their actions (especially the 23% decline in Sunday attendance from 2000 to 2010 in US dioceses), coupled with misstatements of Christian essentials, is astonishing. You can see my response to such un-orthodox and un-generous comments in this week's Anglican Perspective video.
All of this is evidence of the reality that we are not wrestling only against personalities, political agendas, or flesh and blood. Our struggle is against "the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms." (Ephesians 6:12). In every deviation from the historic and biblical doctrines and norms of our Christian faith, there is a spirit of wanton rebellion, denial and lawlessness at work.
And Spiritual Realities require Spiritual Resources
Paul says we should "arm ourselves" with the spiritual resources we have in Christ (Ephesians 6:10-20) in order to effectively address the spiritual realities we are facing. Let me pick up where I left off last week with the last four pieces of the armor of God:
1. Gospel shoes: "...and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace." (Eph. 6:15)
The Good News Bible translates this as "the readiness to announce the Good News of Peace." This verse echoes Paul's earlier declarations in 2:17 ("He came and preached peace...") and Isaiah 52:7 ("How beautiful upon the mountain are the feet of him who brings good tidings, who publishes peace). In light of Colossians 4:6, John Stott observes in his commentary on Ephesians that these "gospel shoes" equip us with "tip-toe readiness" to give gracious but "salty" answers to people who do not yet know Jesus Christ, and who are in need of knowing him. (The Message of Ephesians, IVP, 1962, p. 280) And in The Missionary Nature of the Church, the author Johannes Blauw concludes "Missionary work is like a pair of sandals that have been given to the Church in order that it shall set out on the road and keep on going to make known the mystery of the gospel." (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974, p. 125).
A good friend of mine once quipped "There's no problem in The Episcopal Church that wouldn't be solved by a million new followers of Jesus Christ as members." He is absolutely right. If you are planning to stay in TEC, what are you doing now to bring as many people as you can to salvation through Jesus Christ while you still can? If you are leaving or have already left, what are you doing now to make Christ's Great Commission (Matt. 28:16-20) the heart and life-blood of your own mission, and your church's mission?
2. The shield of faith: "In addition to all this take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one." (Eph. 6:16)
The shield Paul is referring to here is a long, oblong heavily layered shield that covered the entire person of the soldier. It was specifically designed to put out "flaming darts of the enemy," arrows dipped in pitch and then set on fire. It's not difficult to imagine what those "flaming darts of the enemy" are within the context of spiritual warfare. They are both the relentless accusations of guilt by Satan, and the thoughts and feelings of hurt, malice, self-pity, doubt, paralysis and disobedience that he inserts.
We raise that shield of faith and extinguish those flaming darts of the enemy whenever we lay hold of God's promises and power. As John Stott observes, "Faith lays hold of the promises of God in times of doubt and depression, and faith lays hold of the power of God in times of temptation." (The Message of Ephesians, p. 281).
But do you know the promises of God and the power of God? Does your church have a strong Biblical teaching ministry? If it does not, its members will not know God's promises or his power. And if you do not have a strong prayer ministry, personally and corporately, you will have no way to lay hold of those promises in faith. Now is the time to make sure you have these ministries in your church! Now is the time to be open to and lay hold of the power of the Holy Spirit so that neither doubt, depression nor temptation will overcome you. If your church is without a significant and meaningful access to such Biblical teaching, prayer ministry and Holy Spirit power, do you really want to stay and remain exposed to the fiery darts?
3. The helmet of salvation: "Take the helmet of salvation..." (Eph. 6:17a)
Nothing short of an ax or hammer could pierce the Roman soldier's helmet. Paul says here that this spiritual weapon is the helmet of salvation, and earlier in I Thessalonians 5:8 he described this helmet as "the hope of salvation."
In the heat of the battle and at the end of the day, what will enable us to hold up our heads with confidence and joy? What will preserve our minds so that they are continuing to be transformed by God's word rather than squeezed into the world's mold? (see Romans 12:2). We had better not put on a helmet of pride and reverence in our history, traditions, liturgy, vestments and buildings as Anglicans and Episcopalians. It will not survive the blows of the enemy. Nothing less than the hope of our salvation in Jesus Christ - in his blood shed for us on the Cross, and in his resurrection power - should ultimately cover our head and define our identity. If the assurance of our salvation through Jesus Christ and its perfection in the end through Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit were our confidence and joy, our helmet, how would your life change? How would the life of your church change?
4. The sword of the Spirit: "and the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God." (Eph. 6:17b)
The sword Paul refers to here is the Roman short sword (machaira), which was used for both attack and defense in close personal encounters. It is the only piece of the armor which could be used for both defense and attack. Paul says the sword is the word of God, the Bible. And so Stott observes, "Still today [God's written word] is his sword, for he still uses it to cut through people's defenses, to prick their consciences and to stab them spiritually awake. Yet he also puts his sword into our hands so that we may use it both in resisting temptation (as Jesus did, quoting scripture to counter the devil in the wilderness)," and, I might add, to resist false teaching, "and in evangelism." (Message to the Ephesians, p. 282).
But a mutilated Bible is what E.K. Simpson, Dwight Moody and others have dubbed "a broken sword." As Bishop Lawrence and the South Carolina deputies to General Convention declared in their statement upon walking out of General Convention, the Bible has been mutilated by General Convention; the sword has been broken. I received an e-mail from a friend in the Church of England who watched the live stream videos from TEC's General Convention. He applauded the compassion and passion for justice that so many people expressed. But his overall observation was, and I quote, "They are desperately badly educated in the Faith from the bishops down, incapable of connected thought and just woefully ignorant about Christianity. The result, I expect, of many years of the faith not being taught in seminaries and poor preaching."
And so we return to the preeminence and the priority of Biblical preaching and teaching in the local church. But so much of this depends on the education and willingness of your own priest to preach and teach biblically, and to equip others to do so. If you have such a priest, praise God! But, for those of you in TEC, something to consider: how far away from retirement is your priest? And after he or she retires, what assurance do you have that you will be able call a new priest who has the same confidence, conviction and passion to teach and preach biblically, to equip others to do so, and who has been equipped to do so by a seminary that actually teaches the Christian faith?
Yours in Christ,
Phil+
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Anglican Perspective: Revelation
| Source: Anglican Perspective Weekly Video
July 17, 2012
This week, the Rev. Winnie Varghese, an Episcopal priest, wrote about the "generous orthodoxy" of the Episcopal Church. In today's Anglican Perspective, Canon Ashey critiques Rev. Varghese's article and specifically takes issue with the author's source of "revelation." Key Scripture: 2 Tim. 3:16
Watch this week's Anglican Perspective here.
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Event: 2012 Georgia Anglican/Episcopal Men's Conference
| Sponsored by St. Luke's Church, Blue Ridge, GA
The goal of this conference is to prepare men for the Church in the 21st Century. Objectives include:
- How Anglicanism fits under Christianity.
- What we believe and why.
- What difference does it make?
The principal speaker will be the Rev. Dr. Richard Turnbull, Dean at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, England.
Anglican/Episcopal laymen from throughout the state of Georgia and surrounding states are welcomed. Clergymen are also invited.
For more information, go here.
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Is liberal Christianity signing its own death warrant?
| Source: MSNBC
July 19, 2012
By Becky Bratu, NBC News
The Rt. Rev. Mark Joseph Lawrence, the Episcopal bishop of South Carolina, fears for the future of his church.
One week after the U.S. Episcopal Church overwhelmingly voted to approve a provisional rite for blessing gay unions and the ordination of transgender people, Bishop Lawrence said in an interview with NBC News that his denomination is moving too far out of the mainstream.
"Do I think that these two decisions will cause further decline? I believe they will," Bishop Lawrence said. "I think we've entered into a time of sexual and gender anarchy."
Lawrence's comments come amid a growing debate over the future of so-called mainline Christian churches: Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, some Lutherans and more. These denominations, which are generally more liberal than their evangelical counterparts, have been in decline for decades, a trend some observers attribute to their supposed leftward drift....
"I see other mainline denominations that are fairly liberal, like the Presbyterians and the Methodists, just really being very careful about jumping over this hurdle," David Hein, Hood College historian and co-author of "The Episcopalians," a history of the church, told NBC News, "because it really wreaks havoc with the denominations for the national headquarters on down, the institutions, the seminaries, the parishes when you start to lose huge numbers of members."
"I think churches that are fairly clear in their stance and are not either fundamentalist or way out there on the fringe are doing pretty well," Hein added....
In the case of the Episcopal Church, Hein believes it "might not have been hemorrhaging so quickly " had it been more accommodating of its traditionalists.
"I think it's a mistake that the Episcopal Church is not more welcoming of the mainstream attitude," he said, adding that "these accommodations should really have been made five, seven years ago, because really about all that's left of the Episcopal Church is the left wing of the Episcopal Church."
In 2003, the election of the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church caused a deep rift between liberals and conservatives within the global Anglican Communion, with many churches leaving the U.S. and affiliating instead with the global Anglicans. The Episcopal Church is an independent church affiliated with the worldwide Anglican Communion.
"I still believe there is a broad and silent middle [within the Episcopal Church], I just don't know what it would take for them to stand up with moral courage and say, 'We don't believe this,'" Bishop Lawrence said.
Bucking the national trend, the Diocese of South Carolina experienced growth in 2011 in its average Sunday attendance, which rose 10.8 percent, from 11,086 to 12,286, according to the diocese.
"If ever there was a time for the church to be clear, hopeful, and to offer a moral compass to the struggling, and grace, and forgiveness, and healing to the broken, it's now," Bishop Lawrence said.
The rest of the article may be found here.
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St. Andrew's Fort Worth releases statement on TEC's General Convention
| Source: Anglican Ink
July 15, 2012
By George Conger
St Andrew's Episcopal Church in Fort Worth - a member of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth under Bishop Jack L. Iker [this diocese is a member of the Anglican Church in North America] - has purchased a half-page add that was published in the Sunday 15 July 2012 edition of the Fort-Worth Star Telegram.
The parish took out the add to distinguish its views from those of the national church-affiliated diocese led by Bishop C. Wallis Ohl, Jr., whose eight deputies voted to authorize gay blessings.
See the ad at this link.
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Evangelical Wheaton College Joins Lawsuit to Stand for Religious Liberty
| Source: VirtueOnline
July 19, 2012
By Jennifer Marshall, Director of The Heritage Foundation's DeVos Center
Wheaton College, a leading evangelical postsecondary educational institution, has joined the chorus of organizations suing the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) over its mandate requiring nearly all insurance plans to cover abortion drugs and contraception.
"Wheaton College and other distinctively Christian institutions are faced with a clear and present threat to our religious liberty," said Dr. Philip Ryken, president of Wheaton College, in an announcement today that the evangelical institution has joined a lawsuit with the Catholic University of America (CUA) against the anti-conscience mandate.
"Our first president, the abolitionist Jonathan Blanchard, believed it was imperative to act in defense of freedom. In bringing this suit, we act in defense of freedom again."
Wheaton College is the fourth Protestant college to file suit against the HHS mandate (and, full disclosure, this author's alma mater). The Illinois institution joins Colorado Christian University, Geneva College, and Louisiana College. In total, more than 50 institutions are participating in more than 20 lawsuits. These plaintiffs include Catholic hospitals, religious schools serving inner city children, and ministries providing hospice care and assistance to the developmentally disabled....
The rest of the article may be found here.
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New Zealand: Archbishops affirm Bible in Schools
| Source: Anglican Communion News Service
July 20, 2012
The two New Zealand-based Archbishops have publicly declared that the Anglican Church stands four-square behind the Bible in Schools programme. Archbishop David Moxon and Archbishop Brown Turei were moved to comment following televised remarks made yesterday by St Matthew-in-the-City priest Clay Nelson, who has joined the atheist-run Secular Education Network in a bid to get the religious education programme out of the country's primary and secondary schools.
The archbishops' statement follows:
In the light of recent media comment, it is important to clarify and restate the Anglican Church's commitment to Bible in Schools in this country. The ecumenical Churches Education Commission offers the Bible in Schools programme, where a school's board of trustees agrees to provide it. The Anglican Church in this country has long supported the Churches Education Commission, both financially and in principle, and will continue to do so.
If a school's board of trustees, which is the parents' elected representative body, wants to offer this spirituality and values approach to the Bible outside of the school day, it has always seemed to us to be desirable to do so - and a perfectly reasonable provision in a democracy and in terms of Tomorrows' Schools. There are, in fact, many boards who choose not to offer Bible in Schools - and many boards who do believe it is appropriate.
Furthermore, even where a school does host this programme, pupils do not have to attend this part of the day.
This is a long-standing agreement which honours the freedom of choice we enjoy in this country, as well as the right of parents to influence their children's spiritual and moral development.
We honour the work of the hundreds of volunteers who continue, in a loving, sensitive and non-manipulative way, to offer access, when asked, to this heritage in our schools.
Archbishop Brown Turei (Tikanga Maori)
Archbishop David Moon (Tikanga Pakeha)
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First female Anglican bishop for Africa elected
| Source: Anglican Communion News Service
July 19, 2012
The Anglican Church of Southern Africa (ACSA) yesterday made history by appointing
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Bishop-elect Wamukoya
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the first female Anglican bishop on the continent. The Revd Ellinah Ntombi Wamukoya, 61, became the bishop-elect of Swaziland and the first woman bishop in any of the 12 Anglican Provinces in Africa....
The election has to be confirmed by the members of the Synod of Bishops. When that happens, Revd Wambukoya will become the 24th non-retired female bishop of the Anglican Communion. The Member Churches that have appointed or elected women bishops to date are: Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia; Australia; Canada; The Episcopal Church, Cuba and now Southern Africa....
The rest of the article may be found here.
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