We remember in prayer the victims, parents, family and friends involved in the appalling shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut this morning. Lord, in your mercy pour out your comfort and consolation upon
all those affected. Amen.
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Message from Bishop David Anderson
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Bishop Anderson
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Beloved in Christ,
Apparently the quintessentially uber-liberal Episcopal parish of All Saints, Pasadena, California has received more negative feedback recently than they are used to. All Saints, the home base for gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgendered-confused-and-anything-bizarre ministry on the far left edge of the liberal Diocese of Los Angeles (which is on the far left edge of the liberal state of California), has prided itself on ripping open the envelope of orthodox Christian faith and practice, first under former rector George Regas, and now Ed Bacon, who is the present incumbent.
All Saints is active in community ecumenical relations but with a strongly "progressive" bent, so it is hard to be surprised when All Saints, Ed Bacon or his staff do something that treads on other people's comfort zone. Their present plans are to host a Muslim convention in their church - in holy and blessed space consecrated to the worship of Jesus Christ - and welcome some Muslims whose relationship to Islamist organizations is questionable.
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From the Huffington Post: "Salam al-Marayati, president of MPAC [Muslim Public Affairs Council], explained the idea behind reaching out to All Saints as a venue: 'We wanted to provide an alternative model of positive Muslim-Christian relations ... in light of all the negativity surrounding Christians making nasty films about the prophet and Egyptian courts threatening Christians,' al-Marayati told HuffPost Wednesday."
Muslim leaders and groups love to be invited into Christian churches to "tell their story," and speak from the pulpit, but I don't remember Christian leaders being invited to speak at Friday Prayers at the mosques around the country. The real irony is that if the Muslim Islamists ever do gain sufficient control of this country to install Sharia law, All Saints' Church might likely become All Martyrs' Mosque, and the gay rights activists of the community such as the Rev. Ed Bacon and his associate, Rev. Susan Russell, might find themselves on the wrong side of Sharia Law - the side that exterminates behavior they don't approve of. I hope that doesn't happen, because it would be a bad day for all of us, Christian, Jew and Muslim.
Now from the left coast to the first coast, and South Carolina. We are aware that the Episcopal Church's Presiding Bishop, Katherine Jefferts Schori, is planning on a visit in January to Charleston so the remaining Episcopal Church (TEC) congregations can have a diocesan convention and elect the bishop Jefferts Schori has already chosen.
The TEC game plan looks surprisingly like identity theft in the ecclesiastical domain. The TEC supporters gather together and have a convention, elect a new Standing Committee (which has also already been chosen for them) and a bishop, and then claim that they are the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina, direct and unbroken from colonial times. They will use the existing Diocesan Seal, and will represent themselves to banks, insurance companies and all others as the actual and real Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina. Bishop Mark Lawrence will protest that no, he is the real bishop and his Standing Committee is the real Standing Committee of the Diocese of South Carolina, but it quickly begins to look like a television game show of a generation ago, where several people all claimed to be a certain person, and the contestants had to ask questions and figure out who was the real Professor of Pottery from Iowa.
The difference is that that was a game show, meant to amuse, but in South Carolina, the legitimate diocese under Bishop Lawrence has the fight of its life on its hands. Regarding the insurance on the buildings and property, who is the lawful beneficiary? Regarding the bank accounts, what happens when the faux diocese presents signed signature cards and its convention's corporate resolutions?
Some of this will wind up fairly quickly in court, using the "True Church" question - asking a court to determine which body is the lawful body. The Lawrence diocese will hope for a favorable ruling in state court, and will wish to rely on the previous South Carolina State Supreme Court ruling which declared the "Dennis Canon" null and void.
For Jefferts Schori, this could be a difficult field to fight on, unless she opens a New York vs. South Carolina battle in Federal court, hoping to find the necessary grounds and attempting to bypass the State Supreme Court ruling.
It will be both heartbreaking and tormenting to see how and when she commences her cannonade of Charleston and whether the historical Diocese of South Carolina can raise the money to stay in court and fight through to the end. Sooner or later, the Presiding Bishop of Ecclesiastical Litigation will overreach so far that she fails; I pray that it is now, and that an orthodox and catholic Anglicanism can be preserved from her grasp.
Blessings and peace in Christ Jesus,
+David
The Rt. Rev. David C. Anderson, Sr.
President and CEO, American Anglican Council
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Message from Canon Ashey
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Canon Ashey
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How can we restore God's image in us?
Dear Friends in Christ,
Some time in the mid-1980's the curators of the Dutch Museum came face to face with a sight that caused them horror: a disgruntled visitor unimpressed with a Rembrandt original had taken a knife and sliced it open. They had to decide how to rescue this defaced painting - how to restore it to its original image.
They flew in experts, art historians and scientists to observe the damage and to pool their accumulated wisdom to find some way to restore the defaced painting. After months of painstaking work, they literally lifted the face of the painting off the canvas and placed it on another more durable canvass, and no one in the Dutch public could tell the difference, it was so close to the original image...
No one of course, except the grand master himself, Rembrandt, who painted the picture. Would he have detected the slight? Would he have claimed it as his own?
I did a little research into the restoration of defaced art works - paintings that have been scratched or burned, exposed to the harshness of the elements or painted over. The human and technological options for restoration are limited.
The technological solution to a defaced or damaged artwork is to apply chemical solvents to restore the colors, but these are dangerous to the canvas, dangerous to the health of those using them, and dangerous to the environment. One of the latest technologies is to fire a stream of oxygen atoms at the spot that has been in a fire or defaced with pencil, crayon or lipstick, or to bathe the whole thing in a stream of oxygen atoms. In this process, the oxygen reacts with the carbon elements, producing carbon monoxide as the disfiguration lifts without even touching the canvas. However, the system isn't for every damaged painting. Lead-based paints will react with the atomic oxygen to form a lead oxide that is brown in color.
But where paint has flaked away to expose bare spots, the problem of restoration is much worse. In that case, the only solution is a human one: the experts have to fill in the blanks-a process called "inpainting". And whether it's a canvass or a digital photo, the process is highly subjective for each work. The restorer has to "guess" how to fill in the blanks, based on whatever details are visible in the margins surrounding a blank area. At best, it's an educated guess - always an attempt to make up for lost information. And the bottom line for success is whether it is a clever enough improvisation to fool the casual eye.
Once upon a time, God decided to create a masterpiece. So he made a canvass of flesh and blood and painted his very own image upon it - the Bible says in Genesis 1:27, "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." But through our own rebellion and pride we separated ourselves from God and, living apart from him, defaced that magnificent masterpiece. In effect, we took a knife to God's masterpiece and gashed it open. We defaced the image of God in us as thoroughly as that Rembrandt, as thoroughly as the man who took a hammer to Michelangelo's Pieta and in one stroke broke it apart.
We still bear the image of God, faintly, defaced and distorted and broken - but the resemblance and the traces of his image in us haunt us. So we try to restore the image by our own efforts. We fly in multitudes of experts to advise us how to live a successful and fulfilling life. We try to remove the stains by our own good works and best intentions, hoping that we won't make the stain worse. We try to fill in the gaps, guessing from the margins of our lives around the edges of our emptiness and longings how to fill in those blank spaces - improvising what it means to be a good father or mother, husband or wife. At best it's all guesswork, as we try to make sure that our efforts are a clever enough improvisation to fool the casual eye.
But it doesn't fool us - not our innate sense of right and wrong, nor the longing of our emotions, nor the honesty of our hearts, nor the darkness and emptiness that cries out from our spirits. And it doesn't fool the Master either!
In his treatise On the Incarnation, St. Athanasius confronted this very dilemma: How can we restore the image of God that new have defaced through our own pride, rebellion and living apart from God? How can the "portrait" be truly and perfectly restored - without guesswork, without improvising, or without throwing the damaged canvas away and starting all over!
Athanasius looked at all the possibilities in the light of what God has done - including the possibility that the Master Artist himself would simply throw the canvas away, give up on the human race and start all over. And for Athanasius the answer was obvious: "The artist does not throw away the panel," he wrote, "The subject of the portrait must come and sit for it again, and then the likeness is re-drawn on the same material." (Athanasius, On the Incarnation)
You see, Jesus Christ was born to restore God's image in us! On the canvas of human flesh and blood, God has allowed himself to be re-drawn in Jesus Christ, to restore his image in humanity, and to show us what it means to be fully human again! Jesus himself became the canvas, in human flesh and blood! On and in and through Jesus God drew the picture of himself. A perfect and flawless portrait, as the author of Hebrews declares: "The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being..." (Hebrews 1:3 NIV). No guesswork, no stains of sin to remove, no places left blank for others to fill in later, no improvising from the margins. Jesus is the exact representation of God's being, a word which means literally that God engraved on Jesus a perfect, flawless imprint of himself - not only in Jesus' words and deeds, but in his very character and life. Not 99.9%, not "good enough for government standards." In short, there is nothing left that we can learn about God apart from Jesus Christ.
Why not? Because Jesus Christ was born to restore God's image in us, opening our eyes and spotlighting the one, flawless, re-drawn image of God: "The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world...We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth." (John 1:9, 14 NIV)
In the midst of good news and bad, in the hustle of this holiday season, in the turbulence that characterizes the Anglican world and our own, it's important in this Advent season to slow down and remember what it's all about:
Jesus Christ was born to restore God's image in us. And that is by far the best news and the best gift we could ever offer a hurting world!
Yours in Christ,
Phil+
The Rev. Canon Phil Ashey
Chief Operating and Development Officer, American Anglican Council
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Archbishop Duncan attends Papal Audience in Rome
| Source: ACNA
December 11, 2012
 On November 28, 2012 Archbishop Robert Duncan, accompanied by Bishop Ray Sutton, was invited to Pope Benedict XVI's weekly public audience in Rome. Archbishop Eliud Wabukala, Primate of Kenya and chair of the GAFCON Primates Council, was also invited, but the arrival time of his flight prevented his attendance at the audience. As a sign of the "special relationship" between Roman Catholics and Anglicans, articulated by the Second Vatican Council, three chairs were set in front of the entire audience hall for the Anglican leaders to occupy.
At the conclusion of the audience, Archbishop Duncan and Bishop Sutton were afforded the opportunity to bring greetings to His Holiness on behalf of the Anglican Church in North America and the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans.
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Statements from the Diocese of South Carolina re: TEC Presiding Bishop's Special Convention
| Source: Anglican Ink
December 10, 2012
Following the announcement that the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church plans a trip to Charleston for a January 25-26 convention of those wishing to re-associate with the Episcopal Church, the Diocese of South Carolina released the following statements:
"They are certainly free to gather and meet, but they are not free to assume our
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Bishop Lawrence
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identity. The Diocese of South Carolina has disassociated from the Episcopal Church, we've not ceased to exist. We continue to be the Diocese of South Carolina - also known, legally as the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of South Carolina and as the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina, of which I remain the Bishop. We are eager to get on with the ministry of Jesus Christ to a broken world! I suggest that the Steering Committee of this new group will want to do the same. A good first step for them would be to select a new name or choose another Diocese with which to associate."
The Rt. Rev. Mark J. Lawrence
XIV Bishop, Diocese of South Carolina
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"I would like to make a point of clarification for those who think we became a new entity upon our disassociation. A brief history lesson seems in order. We were founded in 1785 (prior to the founding of the Episcopal Church). We were incorporated in 1973; adopted our current legal name, "The Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of South Carolina," in 1987; and we disassociated from the Episcopal Church in October of 2012. We did not become a new entity upon our disassociation. A new entity will need to be created bythose who choose to leave the Diocese and re-associate with the Episcopal Church."
The Rev. Canon Jim Lewis
Canon to the Ordinary, Diocese of South Carolina
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"They [TEC leadership] insist on what others must do yet there is no written standard to support them, and at the same time they run roughshod over their own constitution and canons. They have created a tails we win, heads you lose world where the rules are adjusted according to their desired outcomes--no wonder we dissociated from a community like that."
The Rev. Dr. Kendall S. Harmon
Canon Theologian, Diocese of South Carolina
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Uganda: Orombi to Handover This Sunday
| Source: AllAfrica
December 12,2012
By Joan Akello
The Church of Uganda will enthrone a new Archbishop on Sunday at St. Paul's
 | | Archbishop elect Ntagali |
Cathedral, Namirembe. About 3,000 people are expected to attend the ceremony, including the President, political leaders, business leaders, and all the Bishops of the Church of Uganda. Eleven Archbishops from other Provinces in the Anglican Communion will also be present.
Rt. Rev. Stanley Ntagali was elected the 8th Archbishop of the Church of Uganda during a meeting of the House of Bishops on 22nd June. He was consecrated in December 2004 as pioneer Bishop of Masindi-Kitara Diocese.
His Grace Rev. Henry Luke Orombi announced his early retirement in January 2012. He was enthroned as Archbishop in January 2004 for a ten year term till 2014.
"My passion as a Christian and a leader is preaching the Gospel, and that has been my life-long calling. When I have been invited to our Dioceses on pastoral visits, I have always made it an opportunity to preach and invite people into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. So, I want to devote the rest of my life, while I am still able, to fulfilling this calling full-time," said Orombi while addressing the press about his early retirement.
He has consecrated 26 new Bishops and launched four new Dioceses, made extensive travels and preached around the country. He has been a source of encouragement for the emergence of the Global South churches as leaders for Biblical faithfulness within the worldwide Anglican Communion....
The rest of the article may be found here.
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ACC won't let Uruguay go
| Source: The Church of England Newspaper via George Conger blog
December 9, 2012
By George Conger
The Standing Committee of the Anglican Consultative Council has declined to back the July 2012 request from the Diocese of Uruguay to allow it to secede from the Iglesia Anglicana del Cono Sur (de América). Meeting last month before the start of ACC general meeting in Auckland, the standing committee turned down Uruguay's plea to move from the conservative Southern Cone to the liberal Anglican Episcopal Church of Brazil.
The ACC recommended Uruguay focus on electing a new bishop to succeed the Rt. Rev. Miguel Tamayo who was to retire last June. However the diocese responded that this advice was unhelpful as it had elected the former general secretary of the Anglican Church of Canada, Archdeacon Michael Pollesel to be its bishop, but his election was not ratified by the Southern Cone's House of Bishops.
The Anglican Journal reported Uruguay would hold another election, but it was not optimistic that its choice of bishop would pass muster with the wider province as grave "missiological, philosophical and theological differences" remained.
On 12 Nov 2010 the diocese voted to secede from the Cono Sur after the provincial synod declined to authorize the ordination of women priests....
The rest of the article may be found here.
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Scotland: St George's Tron evicted by the Kirk
| Source: The Christian Institute
December 12, 2012
The minister of St George's Tron in Glasgow has preached his last sermon in the building, before the Church of Scotland seizes the premises.
The congregation, which has been meeting in its Buchanan Street venue for more than
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St. George's Tron
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70 years, split from the Kirk in June over the ordination of openly homosexual ministers.
Since then St George's Tron has been embroiled in a legal dispute about its building, which has recently undergone a £2.6 million refurbishment paid for by its members.
Last Wednesday, law officers appeared at the church prayer meeting demanding the return of bibles, hymn books and an organ.
The minister, Rev Dr William Philip, described the Kirk's actions as "shameful".
He said: "Having law officers disrupt a church meeting and intimidate a church is something we associate with China or former Soviet dictatorships but is the last thing we expected from the so-called national Church."...
The rest of the article may be found here.
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Nigeria to Western nations: We'd sooner refuse aid than legalize same-sex "marriage"
| Source: LifeSiteNews
December 10, 2012
By Kirsten Andersen | The Nigerian government has put the Western world on notice that if the cost of accepting aid is to allow same-sex couples to "marry," that's a price the country is unwilling to pay.
Nigeria's House of Representatives recently unanimously approved a bill banning same-sex unions, despite threats from the Obama administration and United Kingdom Prime Minister David Cameron that they would consider withholding aid if the country didn't recognize gay rights. The bill would impose a 14-year prison sentence on anyone who enters a "same-sex marriage contract or civil union" or aids and abets such an action. Public displays of affection between homosexuals would result in a ten-year jail sentence. The bill also bans gay clubs and organizations.
"[Same-sex 'marriage'] is alien to our society and culture and it must not be imported," said House majority leader Mulikat Adeola-Akande. "This practice has no place in our culture, religion, Nigeria or anywhere in Africa. It is immorality and debasement of our culture, we condemn it in totality."
Rep. Adams Jagaba said Nigerians should reject Western attitudes toward same-sex unions. "We are a cultured people," he said, "we cannot carry everything from other cultures."
Rep. Nkeiruka Onyejeocha said she hoped the vote would send a strong signal to Western nations that Nigeria's morals and ethical values are not for sale....
The rest of the article may be found here.
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