Feed aggregator

The Daily Nation
By AFP
Posted Tuesday, August 24 2010 at 15:19
ENTEBBE, Tuesday

The Anglican church in the West no longer adheres to the word of God, African bishops said Tuesday at a continental conference attended by the Archbishop of Canterbury.  Rowan Williams, the head of the world-wide Anglican Communion, has been criticised by some African church leaders for his tolerant stance on homosexuality.

"Today, the West is lacking obedience to the word of God," Reverend Ian Ernest of Mauritius, the head of the Council of Anglican Provinces in Africa, told journalists. "It is for us (Africans) to redress the situation," he said, adding that he has severed all ties to the Episcopalian churches in Canada and the US that have allowed gays to enter the clergy.

The conference host, the Archbishop of Uganda Henry Luke Orombi, said African leaders would use the six-day meeting to voice the concerns about the "ailing church" to Williams. "Homosexuality is incompatible with the word of God," Orombi said. "It is good (that) Archbishop Rowan is here. We are going to express to him where we stand. We are going to explain where our pains are."

Orombi also said that disputes over homosexuality had already divided the global Anglican community. "There is already a break. It doesn't need to be announced. It is in the way people act," he said.

Williams delivered a sermon Tuesday during the opening of the meeting, the first of its kind since 2004. While he did not mention homosexuality, he said it was the duty of all bishops to be open minded on contentious issues. "We must learn to listen to those we lead and serve to find out what their hopes and needs and confusions are. We must love them and attend to their humanity in all its diversity," he said. "We cannot assume we always know better and that we always have the right answer to any specific question."

Read here

 

That leads on to the second aspect of the Good Shepherd's service that we shepherds must seek to grow into. The Good Shepherd does not abandon his flock when they are at risk; he shares their danger. It is only the hired man who will run away – because he does not have the passionate attachment to the flock that the Good Shepherd has. In theological terms, we could say that the Good Shepherd can never abandon his own Body – these are his own people, purchased with his blood, and his life and theirs are utterly bound up together. He does indeed understand them from the inside: truly human and truly divine, he knows – as the letter to the Hebrews so wonderfully spells out – all the temptations and troubles we know. And in his incarnate life, he exposes himself to the full weight of human sin, to violence and rejection, to the cost and the effect of all that is done wrong in the world. He is a Good Shepherd because he will not separate himself from those he serves. He takes the consequence of their sin and failure and he takes the risk of living alongside them.

So for us who have been called to Christian leadership, the message is clear. We cannot refuse to take risks alongside our people and to take risks for them – to put ourselves and our safety or comfort at risk for the sake of the community's life. Our authority comes not from being at a safe distance but from being there with those who need our ministry. And we may well think of all those in this continent who in the past and the present have so bravely stayed with their people, who have not sought safety or comfort but have stood alongside God's precious children and risked so much so as to be able to go on speaking the word of life. In this country, as we have already been reminded this morning, we cannot fail to remember Janani Luwum; but in our own times, there have been many who have courageously continued in this tradition – and here we think specially today with celebration and thanksgiving of our brothers in Sudan, in DRC and Zimbabwe whose authority as pastors in the church of God rests so deeply on their willingness to take risks alongside their flock and for them – while witnesses, in St Peter's words, witnesses to both suffering and glory.

One of the focal points of this Conference is the renewal of leadership in Africa. And all of us know that, here as elsewhere in the world, there can be no lasting justice without sacrificial and selfless political leadership....

Read it all.

Bishops from all of Africa as well as Anglicans from around the world are meeting together in Entebbe, Uganda, for the Second All Africa Bishop’s Conference August 23-29. 

The conference calls together bishops and archbishops from 400 dioceses in Africa.  Invited guests from around the Anglican world are also present.

Archbishop Robert Duncan, Bishop Martyn Minns, Bishop John Guernsey and Bishop Bill Atwood are among the Anglican Church in North America leaders who are attending the event.  “The Anglican Church is expanding everywhere in Africa.  There are now some 400 dioceses spread across the continent.  As Archbishop I am here to learn and to stand in solidarity in this vigorous gospel mission,” said Archbishop Duncan.  As the leader of the Anglican Church in North America, Archbishop Duncan was included with the other Anglican primates (leaders of Anglican provinces) during the opening Eucharist, and shared in the distribution of communion, as did the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.

Archbishop Williams told the gathered bishops that the 21st Century may well be the “African Century.”

Archbishop Duncan, as well as Archbishop John Chew of Southeast Asia, have also been invited to sit with the primates of the Council of Anglican Provinces of Africa during their meetings.

To learn more about this important meeting, visit the conference website.

By W Bradford Wilcox, MercatorNet

Research on the happiness of married women shows that the traditional model still has a lot going for it.

The happiness or otherwise of women is one of the great sociological themes of the last five decades and it is not clear how the balance sheet currently stands. But, for anyone interested in the happiness of married women, a study of American wives by University of Virginia sociologists W Bradford Wilcox and the late Steven L Nock is highly instructive.

Their research, first published in the journal Social Forces under the heading, “What’s Love Got To Do With It? Equality, equity, commitment and women’s marital quality”, is here summarised by Professor Wilcox as a resource for women and men interested in learning more about successful marriages.

Read here

Something I'm doing as an experiment is writing a 'thought for the day' on Bible Gateway's 'verse of the day'. This arose out of trying to think through ways of helping busy people – I had in mind especially business people on the train to work first thing in the morning – read the Bible more often.

For a lot of these people, my guess is a 'verse a day' is going to be about the appropriate quantity. I think this explains the popularity of many series of Bible-reading notes. Typically, however, these notes don't really do much with the Bible text, which simply becomes a 'blessed thought' on which to hang a heart-warming anecdote or a 'motivating' message.

What I'm trying to do is writing something brief and interesting, but actually biblical and meaty enough to do the job.

Check out the following and leave comments if you think this is helpful (it is quite a lot of work, so I want to know it is worth it!):

Thought for the day on the verse of the day: Psalm 116:1-2

Bible Gateway verse of the day: Psalm 94:18-19

Bible Gateway verse of the day: Romans 8:32

Bible Gateway verse of the day: Psalm 42:8

Like a rock:

1996: In response to a questionnaire from Outlines newspaper (now part of Windy City Times), Obama, a candidate for the Illinois state senate seat representing the wealthy Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, writes, “I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages." Eight years later, in a letter to Windy City Times, Obama would say that he opposed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) of 1996, calling it “an effort to demonize people for political advantage” that should be repealed...

2004: In an interview with Windy City Times, Obama mentions the religious dimension of the gay marriage debate, says he supports civil unions, and indicates that his stance is dictated in large part by political strategy...

July 2007: At the CNN/YouTube Democratic primary debate in Charleston, South Carolina, Obama discusses interracial versus gay marriage and says that it should be up to individual religions whether they recognize civil unions as marriages...

2008: In an interview with MTV, Obama says he opposes Prop 8, but also gay marriage. Civil unions, the candidate says, are sufficient...

hat tip to Pyromaniacs

1. People come to you for help — instead of assuming that, if you really knew your job, you would intuitively know they needed help, and come to them without being asked.

2. Everyone immediately tells you, to the best of his ability, what his or her actual issue is.

3. Everyone who asks you a question really wants to hear the answer.

4. Everyone who asks you for help really wants to he helped.

5. Everyone who calls you really does want his/her computer to work the very best it can.

6. You and your callers agree that computer bugs and problems are bad, and should be done away with.

7. When you identify viruses, spyware, unwanted popups, and crashes as "bad," and target them for elimination, the folks you help don't accuse you of being harsh and judgmental.

8. Nobody who calls you is actually in love with the computer problems and misbehaviors they're experiencing.

9. When you identify a computer malady you want to eradicate, nobody can wave a book or point to a Big Name who argues that it is actually the latest, greatest "thing" in computers, and should be earnestly sought after, cherished, cultivated, and spread abroad.

10. Nobody who calls you for help thinks that he's hearing a little voice in his heart telling him that what you're saying is just so much smelly cheese.

11. Everyone to whom you give sensible counsel will hear, heed, remember, and follow that counsel — they won't insist on "feeling an inner peace" before doing it...more

Here's the text:

So I have a dear believing friend who is terminally ill. I know that Jesus healed many people and that still today, God heals. Jesus promises that whatever I ask for in his name he will give me (Jn 14:14). Jesus promises that when you ask you receive. And so I ask, and I pray, and cry out to God for my friend. And my friend dies. How can I reconcile what I read in Luke 11 about our loving Father who wants to give his children good things, the best things, and the seemingly purposeless suffering and death of my friend?

The only way to make sense of that is to agree with scripture that my understanding of what is good, what is best for my friend, best for me, is skewed; to trust that God loves my friend infinitely more than I do and that somehow in God’s perfect wisdom it was good, it was best, for my friend’s soul that he experience suffering in the body and then to be welcomed into heaven. I come, in other words, to the point where I submit what I perceive in my limited and fallen understanding to be good to the revelation that “God works all things together for the good of those who are called according to his purpose.” (Rom 8:28). God knows what the best is. I don’t.

Jesus found me when I was around 24 years old. Recently I found an old notebook with lists of things I was praying for at that time. They weren’t bad things. A girlfriend. Money. A new car. A better job. Now at that time I tended to treat women as objects and to go out and drink way too much. But very soon after my conversion, I went through a long period of time when women just weren’t interested in me. I couldn’t figure it out. I prayed and prayed. And I was making less money so I couldn’t go out like I used too. So there I was, brand new Christian, with a drinking problem and a sin issue with sex, praying to my Father for money and a girlfriend. “What’s wrong with God?” I wondered. Why isn’t he answering my prayers? Maybe I’m not praying with enough faith? I went to see my pastor at the time. He didn’t know everything I was struggling with but in the course of our conversation he pointed me to the book of James and this passage: “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.” (James 4:2-3 ESV)

Oh.

God is my Father. He will only give me good things. When you pray for something you believe to be good and you don’t get it, the assumption has to be that God in his wisdom knows that you are not ready for it, that he has something better, or that you are desiring or wanting something that will hurt you…that you’re asking for a snake and he wants to give you bread, a scorpion and he wants to give you a fish. It took me years to understand that when Jesus says I’ll give you anything you ask in my name…he’s not saying: “Add the phrase ‘in Jesus’ name’ to your prayers and I’m magically bound to give you what you want.” To pray in Jesus’ name is to pray for things that are consistent with his name—in accordance with his will...more

Okay, so we've established that Janet Trisk, a priest in the Province of South Africa and appointee to one of the highest bodies of the Anglican Communion, the Standing Committee of the ACC, is a member of an organization that believes that God is not objective reality and is merely a human construct.

The question is . . . how can we let key leaders know this?

I'm hoping that a bunch of you will -- yet again -- pick a Province and write its Primate a letter, as well as send either an email or letter to Janet Trisk's bishop who is, apparently, the Rt Revd Rubin Phillip, of the Diocese of Natal, Province of South Africa.

If you're interested in being a part of a coordinated process of letter writing to bishops of the Anglican Communion, please send me a Private Message with the subject heading of "Letter Writing." Let me know if there is a particular bishop or Primate you'd like to write so that I can keep track.

I think Primates and bishops should hear from concerned individual members of the Anglican Communion in the old-fashioned way about Janet Trisk's beliefs. And that's where you come in, if you're up to it.

The Bishop in Egypt Dr Mouneer Anis told bishops from more than 400 dioceses at the 2nd All Africa Bishops Conference that this was an historic moment for Africa’s Christian community.

“There is no doubt that history is going to record what happens at this conference for future generations,” he said at today’s opening service in Entebbe, Uganda. “This is no ordinary conference because it’s happening in an extraordinary context.”

He explained that although “Africa groans” under the weight of conflicts, epidemics and poverty the African church was growing in an extraordinary way. It was predicted, he said, to become a continent of 673 million Christians by 2025.

He said that, as a consequence of this growth, the centre of the Christian world was shifting and so was the global role of the church of Africa. He issued a challenge to the bishops present to consider the African church’s place in such a world and said this weeks’ conference could be a turning point in the life of the church of Africa

Read it all.

There is a twitter feed on the left which is very helpful, as well as a lot of other information. Check it out.

Your Grace, The Most Rev Luke Orombi, I have chosen to publicly address this communication to you as the Honourable Host to the 400 African Anglican bishops who are coming to Uganda this week. We are informed the purpose of their coming here is to discuss a host of issues affecting the continent. Among the issues are poverty, diseases, matters of justice and peace, wars, ethnic cleansing, genocide; and the relationship between the Church and the State. This is a tall agenda.

According to Amanda Onapito, the public relations officer of the Province of the Church of Uganda, "It is time believers combined their efforts to find solutions to problems that affect Africa." I am hopeful of all attempts to do so.

Read it all.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, will today meet African bishops, most of whom are unhappy about his perceived tolerance of homosexual behaviour in the Anglican Communion.

Dr Williams, who arrived in the country yesterday, will be the lead preacher at the opening of the All Africa Bishops Conference in Entebbe aimed at fostering unity and breathing life into a Church, the Archbishop of Uganda Luke Orombi, described as “broken”.

Read it all.

About 400 African bishops begin a seven-day meeting in Entebbe today for the second All Africa Bishops Conference. The theme of the conference, organised by the Council of Anglican Provinces of Africa (CAPA), is "Securing the future, unlocking our potential".

President Yoweri Museveni will officially open the conference tomorrow.

The conference takes place at Imperial Resort Beach Hotel. Yesterday, the lobby of the hotel was a beehive of activity, as delegations of clergy from Burundi, Central Africa, Congo, Egypt, Indian Ocean islands, and Kenya checked in for registration.

Read it all.

Here is the way the WSJ front page article on the new party opens--

This year, an anti-Washington mood is opening doors to novice candidates from right and left who speak to the ire coursing through the electorate. The Modern Whigs, a start-up party with a venerable name, are trying to tap an even more elusive force: the angry moderate.

.

Here is the question: Jeff Vanke, the new Whig candidate running for Congress in Roanoke, Virginia, is how far behind the Republican incumbent at present? Please guess without peaking.

Watch it all (please note it begins with a crisis which is upsetting but I promise it is encouraging--really; KSH).

For now, 50,000 troops will remain — combat ready but assigned primarily to training Iraqi forces, a shift made somewhat awkward by Obama's rigid deadline. It will force the State Department, for instance, to hire an army of private security contractors to take over functions that would more appropriately be handled by the military.

That is odd and troubling. But it doesn't alter the fact that a large combat force is no longer needed. By every measure in the comprehensive Iraq Index maintained by the Brookings Institution, violence has plummeted. Civilian casualties are down to 1,366 so far this year vs. 34,500 in 2006, the year before President Bush's "troop surge" strategy reversed the course of the war. U.S. military fatalities stand at 43 this year in Brookings' July measure, just 1% of the 4,415 who've given their lives since the invasion began in 2003. This year, 280 troops have been wounded, vs. 6,412 in 2006.

Stability, the overriding U.S. priority after post-invasion blunders sent Iraq tumbling into chaos, has been achieved. But whether Iraqis can keep it is an open question.

Read it all.

By David W Virtue, Virtueonline

Gospel and Social Justice will combine to bring needed change to the area

Some 400 African Anglican bishops including a small group of Western Anglican bishops and leaders of social service agencies, who together represent more than 80 percent of the shared faith of the Anglican Communion, are gathering here to confront Africa's pressing spiritual and social problems.

The weeklong conference will focus on issues of conflict, poverty, corruption and disease on the continent in the context of the gospel of redemption and change.

"It is a misreading of the conference agenda to suggest that we are all about social change without the gospel being at the heart of it," a Nigerian bishop told VOL. Changing peoples' outward circumstances while not addressing peoples' need for inner transformation by Christ is to misread the agenda here, a Ugandan bishop told VOL.

The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams is here and will be the guest preacher at the opening Eucharist on Aug. 24.

Read here

Archbishop Timothy Dolan told parishioners during Mass on Sunday that he was saddened by a spate of suspected anti-Hispanic attacks on Staten Island that has left some Latin American immigrants fearing for their safety.

Dolan made the remarks during a Spanish-language sermon at St. Mary's of The Assumption Roman Catholic Church in the borough's Port Richmond section.

The small neighborhood is home to the majority of the borough's Mexican immigrants, who have been the targets of most of the dozen attacks since April, authorities have said. A gay Hispanic couple also was attacked in one incident.

Read it all.

From BBC News

People should stop calling heroin users "junkies" or "addicts", an influential think tank on drugs has said.   The UK Drug Policy Commission said such names stigmatised users and made it more difficult to get off drugs.   Its report suggested that the policing of drugs on the streets and methadone programmes forcing users to go to chemists were "publicly humiliating". Instead, the study said that British society needed to show more compassion towards drug users.   Authors of the six-month report said the terms "junkie" and "addict" were distrustful and judgmental and led to feelings of low self-worth among drug users.   They said these hostile attitudes only added to the stigma of drug addiction and made it harder for users to give up.   Read here