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For the Lord gives wisdom; from His mouth come knowledge and understanding
Proverbs 2:6 NKJV
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A Message from Bishop Anderson
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Bishop Anderson
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Beloved in Christ, First, I'm glad to be back in the office and writing a Weekly Update article. I was traveling for two and a half weeks and unable to post articles. There are a number of issues to comment on and make you aware of, perhaps for your further investigation. The first is from the Dean of the Washington National Cathedral, the Very Rev. Gary Hall. I knew him in my former life in the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, where heresy, insipid theology, and uber-liberal narrow mindedness abounds. Los Angeles seemingly has been the incubator of Episcopal bishops and clergy who have carried the revisionist zeitgeist to various other dioceses around the country. In the case of Gary Hall, he was appointed to be Dean of the Episcopal Church's flagship pulpit in the nation's capital and he uses the Cathedral venue to put forth inane propositions. His latest was reported by Heather Clark on October 8, 2013: Hall claimed during his weekly Sunday address that it is a sin to oppose homosexuality. Hall states with the great confidence of those who think that God didn't know what he was talking about in the area of sex, "We must now have the courage to take the final step and call homophobia and heterosexism what they are. They are sin. Homophobia is a sin." Now I would agree that no one should hate gay or lesbian people, nor even dislike them, and certainly not fear them, which is what the word phobia is all about. However Hall doesn't mean just hate, dislike or fear, he means that if you don't believe that homosexual behavior is GOOD, if you believe that homosexual behavior violates God's law and isn't recommended for any reason, then you are committing a SIN! Many of us would counter that to accept homosexual behavior as a positive good and approve of sexual relationships between persons of the same gender, is the sin, and that as Christians we are called to love those who sin as Jesus loves them and calls them to a more positive, healthy, and spiritually disciplined life.
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Now while we are in the "You've got to be kidding" category, we come to an article (excerpted below) from the Dispatch International for October 15, by Ingeborg Olsson, who writes of the selection of the new archbishop and head of the Church of Sweden, which has about 6.5 million members. It sounds like the new archbishop, who is the first woman bishop to fill that post, is either just batty, or a first rate heretic, or Sweden's first Islamic archbishop, you pick.
According to reports, Antje Jackelén was only lightly vetted, if at all, and during a questioning in Uppsala on October 1, as a candidate for the highest office in the Church of Sweden, she and others were asked if they thought Jesus presented a truer picture of God than Muhammad. Apparently she couldn't give a straight answer, and in her reported evasion of the question she quickly emerged as the bishop who couldn't decide between Muhammad and Jesus Christ. You'd have thought that would sink her chances, but apparently it moved her forward.
She is said to prefer the term Allah for God rather that the more accepted Christian term, and chose for her Archepiscopal motto "God is greater" which is a translation of the Arabic Islamic "Allahu Akbar." So we come back to the three choices, batty, a heretic, or Sweden's first Islamic archbishop, take your choice.
Now lastly I report on an Anglican item pertaining to the American Episcopal Church. For those former and current members of the Episcopal Church, you remember the United Thank Offering Ingathering, the little Blue Boxes that you filled with coins for things you were thankful for, and the Episcopal Church Women who organized, undergirded and ran the program through the UTO Board. This mission outreach, which has raised so much money over the 100 plus years it has been in operation and has done so much good, has been the subject of an attempted takeover by the Episcopal Presiding Bishop, her staff, and possibly the Executive Council. The blogosphere has caught fire as the Episcopal Church leaders have disseminated half truths or deliberate misinformation, held closed door meetings, and chastised people who were reporting on the action as if they were the trouble makers.
Among the leaders of the ECW and UTO there is quite an outcry, to put it mildly, and yet it looks like the power and money hungry top leaders of the Episcopal Church will succeed in taking over the decision making and the money, running into the millions, of an organization that started out and has continued until now as a very successful grassroots ministry. Some sites to look at if you are interested in reading the propaganda that the Episcopal News Service is putting out and the outraged comments of readers who don't believe the story being pushed: here and here and here.
One has to wonder why the Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop, her Chief Operating Officer Bishop Stacy Sauls (former trial attorney) and her chancellor David Booth Beers need to seize the UTO money. Is their litigation fund running low, or did they spend all of the mission money on litigation and now they need UTO money to replace it? British Lord Action once said "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely," and as the office of the Presiding Bishop has by design accreted to itself more and more power, the rest of the church has suffered. But if the New York office of the Episcopal Church deals in such a Machiavellian manner with the UTO leaders, do they really think that the little Blue Boxes when full will be turned over to the New York office? I suspect that the grassroots ladies will show New York a thing or two, but it won't be the money!
Blessings and peace in Christ Jesus,
+David
The Rt. Rev. David C. Anderson, Sr.
President and CEO, American Anglican Council
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A Message from Canon Ashey
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Canon Ashey is in Nairobi, Kenya for the GAFCON 2 gathering and will not be writing an article this week.
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[TEC] Council expresses 'deep regret' over UTO events
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Source: Episcopal News Service
October 17, 2013
By Mary Frances Schjonberg
The Episcopal Church's Executive Council formally moved Oct. 17 to try to heal the wounds incurred during the recent controversy over the functioning of the United Thank Offering.
Council's efforts included two resolutions and many statements of support for the future of UTO and its relationship with the wider church. In addition, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori told council that she and UTO board president Barbara Schafer, from the Diocese of Nevada, were working on a joint statement to later release to the church....
The rest of the article may be found here.
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Younger Generation Has Not Rejected Traditional Marriage Argument, They Haven't Heard It, Argues Conservative Advocate
| Source: Christian Post
October 12, 2013
By Napp Nazworth
Washington - The fight to prevent the redefinition of marriage is not over, panelists argued Friday at the Values Voter Summit.
When asked if the younger generation is a lost cause, Ryan T. Anderson, William E. Simon Fellow in Religion and Free Society at The Heritage Foundation, answered, "It's not that the young generation has heard the argument for marriage and rejected it, it's that they haven't heard the argument for marriage yet."
Anderson compared the fight for marriage to the pro-life cause. Forty years ago, the same was said about abortion, Anderson explained. Many assumed that pro-life advocates would slowly die off as younger generations would become increasingly more pro-choice. But, that is not what happened.
Instead, "we had coalitions form, we had think tanks form, we had politicians like Ronald Reagan, Ed Meese, Henry Hyde use the bully pulpit and create policies." And because of that, "my generation is now more pro-life than my parents generation. ... There's no reason why the same thing can't happen with the marriage issue," he said....
The rest of the article may be found here.
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ACNA Texts For Common Prayer Now Available
| Source: Anglican Ink
October 17, 2013
By Canon Jack Lumanog
 The Anglican Church in North America is pleased to announce the release of Texts for Common Prayer. Included here are the Offices of Daily Morning and Evening Prayer, and the Holy Communion (Long Form and Short Form), as well as Supplemental Canticles for Worship. These are all the "working" forms approved by the College of Bishops for use in the Province. Also bound with these working texts is The Ordinal which has been adopted and authorized as The Ordinal of the Province.
A book form of Texts for Common Prayer will, God willing, be available from Anglican House Publishers, to be distributed by Amazon at $7.95 per copy by January 1st. Many thanks to Ron Speers and his team for making this work available to the Church.
Texts for Common Prayer is available for download here....
The rest of the article may be found here.
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Australia: New Archbishop of Sydney's first Presidential Address to Synod
| Source: Anglican Ink
October 14, 2013
Speaker: Archbishop Glenn Davies
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Archbishop Davies
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Members of Synod, brothers and sisters, saints of the Most High, welcome to the final session of this Synod.My vision for the next five years is to see the name of Jesus exalted in the city of Greater Sydney and beyond, and to see his body, which is the church, gaining greater honour and respect among the communities in which we live (Ephesians 3:10, 21). For this to happen we must be people who are energised and transformed by the gospel, such that our lives reflect not merely the rhetoric, but the reality of the love of Christ.
Let our love for one another and our love for God, grounded in Christ's love for us, be the magnet that draws unbelievers to the Saviour so that they too may be enfolded into the fellowship of the church, which is his body and his temple. We love him because he first loved us. It is his love that we proclaim and his name that we seek to exalt, as we commit ourselves afresh to glorify God with every fibre of our being....
Ethical Challenges
Australian society is ever changing and Sydney, the most populous city in the nation, is often in the vanguard of change. The political landscape has changed markedly in less than a decade. Whereas in 2004 the Howard Government, with bipartisan support, strengthened the Marriage Act so as to make explicit the definition of marriage as 'the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life', we have already seen attempts within the life of the last Federal Parliament to amend this definition and moves within the Australian Capital Territory, Tasmania and our own State Parliament to challenge the status quo. Notwithstanding the Federal Attorney-General's recent decision to refer the ACT legislation to the High Court, the agitation for so-called 'gay marriage' will not so easily disappear.... We shall need great courage to stand against the tenor of our society as it slips further and further away from the tenets of scriptural authority and biblical morality, whether it be 'same-sex marriage', abortion or euthanasia. We should also pray for those who govern us, as the Apostle Paul directs, 'that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life, godly and respectful in every way' (1 Timothy 2:2)....
The rest of the address may be found here.
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Swedish Archbishop prefers Allah
| Source: Dispatch International
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Archbishop Jackelén
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October 15, 2013
By Ingeborg Olsson
The bookmakers were right. Today it was announced that the Church of Sweden's new archbishop is Antje Jackelén. But who is the church's new top leader, who has chosen part of the Muslim prayer call as her motto?...
Many have been taken aback by the theological opinions Jackelén revealed during a questioning in Uppsala on October 1. The candidates for the highest position in the Swedish church were asked if they thought Jesus presented a truer picture of God than Muhammed. With her evasive answer Jackelén suddenly emerged as the bishop who couldn't choose between Jesus and Muhammed. This provoked strong reactions on some editorial pages....
It is not only Jackelén's motto and her unwillingness to put Jesus ahead of Muhammed that has evoked strong feelings among many committed Christians. During her questioning in Uppsala, the new archbishop also said that the Church of Sweden has more in common with other religions than with other Christian churches, that the Virgin Birth must be understood metaphorically, that hell doesn't exist and that the Biblical texts should not be taken as truth.
The question is whether the Church of Sweden has chosen the "unifying force" it had hoped for, or taken yet another step towards its abolition.
The rest of the article may be found here.
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