An Appropriate Reading for Today

From the Gospel reading for the Second Sunday in Advent:

“There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. Men will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken.” (The Holy Bible : New International Version. Lk 21:25-26)
No comments will be posted without a full name and location, see the policy.

Rift flares after US Episcopal Church elects [second] gay bishop

Ed: The theological Elvis has left the ecclesiological building.

A diocese in Los Angeles has elected only the second openly gay bishop in the global Anglican Church, reigniting an issue that has caused deep division.

Rev Mary Glasspool, from Baltimore, was elected assistant bishop, although she needs a majority of national Episcopal Church heads to back her consecration.

The election of the first openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, six years ago created a massive rift.

Traditionalists have already expressed opposition to the latest election. Read more
No comments will be posted without a full name and location, see the policy.

Tory Muslim peer Baroness Warsi pelted with eggs

Eggs are thrown at the Shadow Minister for Community Cohesion and Social Action, Baroness Warsi, when she visited Luton.

Baroness Warsi was taking part in a walkabout in the Muslim Bury Park area of Luton when she was confronted by a group of protesters.

The male protesters accused her of not being a proper Muslim and supporting the death of Muslims in Afghanistan. See here
No comments will be posted without a full name and location, see the policy.

Christian loses sex therapy case

Ed: Another Revelation 13:17 moment.

A relationship counsellor from Bristol who refused to offer sex therapy to gay couples has lost his appeal for unfair dismissal.

Christian Gary MacFarlane, 47, was sacked by marriage guidance service Relate after he said he could not do anything to promote gay sex.

Mr MacFarlane, who is a former church elder, was appealing on the grounds of religious discrimination.

He alleged Relate had refused to accommodate his religious beliefs. Read more


No comments will be posted without a full name and location, see the policy.

London Gay Men's Chorus Mayor's choice for Carols at Southwark Cathedral

Ed: The photo says it all

"The London Gay Men's Chorus is delighted to have been invited to perform once again at The Clore Ballroom at Royal Festival Hall. Come and join in the merriment as they sing both Christmas favourites and extracts from their show Singderella. The gentlemen of the Chorus have been extraordinarily busy this year with a concert in Helsinki, being a host choir for the Various Voices festival, their sold out Edinburgh Fringe show Oklahomo, a summer concert at the Shaw Theatre, their Christmas Show at Cadogan Hall, and performing as the chosen choir for the Mayor of London's Christmas Carol Concert at Southwark Cathedral." See here

No comments will be posted without a full name and location, see the policy.

The crisis in Anglicanism threatens its position in national life

[...] The congregation is falling away almost as quickly as the money. Thirty years ago 11 per cent of the UK population went to church and the average age of the flock was 37. Today, only 6 per cent are regular observers and the average age is 51. With the Anglican Church in a state of decline, troubles are piling up in battalions. The divisive issues of the ordination of women as bishops and the rights of homosexual clergy are making Anglo-Catholics susceptible to the inveigling of Rome. The Roman Catholic Church’s apostolic constitution has set out the terms whereby Anglo-Catholics would be permitted to become Roman Catholics without giving up their liturgies.

Now that 8.5 per cent of Anglican clergy jobs are expected to disappear over the next five years, the very question of the Church of England’s role in the nation’s affairs is at issue. There is still a case for the Church to be the spiritual witness to moments of temporal national communion but the privilege of establishment becomes much harder to defend when the congregation is thinning out and the Church cannot pay the bills. The Anglican Church faces a dilemma analogous to that of the BBC. It needs a wide scope to justify its position of national privilege and yet its future as an organisation may lie as the provider of a smaller, niche product. Read more
No comments will be posted without a full name and location, see the policy.

Cutbacks contribute to impression of ‘dying and divided church’

The lopsided church of St Vincent has stood in the village of Littlebourne since the 13th century, in the diocese of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Its 87 regular worshippers, mostly retired or nearing retirement, managed to raise £50,000 last year through coffee mornings and cake sales. Of that, more than £34,000 went to the diocese to help to pay for clergy and clergy pensions.

The ten worshippers in the neighbouring church of Stodmarsh, also under the cure of the Rev John Allan, raised nearly £5,000, of which a quarter went to the diocese. The other two parishes in the benefice, Ickham and Wickhambreaux, with only 35 worshippers between them, raised £25,000 and contributed £11,000 in quota.

It costs about £40,000 a year to “run” a stipendiary parish priest in the Church of England. As the combined quota of the four parishes came to more than £50,000, worshippers assumed that when Mr Allan announced that he had to retire next January because of ill health, they would be given a replacement. But instead, they claim that they have been advised that even if they raised £1 million, they would not get another full-time priest.

They are to be given instead a “house-for-duty” priest, an unpaid part-timer. In return for free accommodation in the vicarage, he will work three days a week. Read more
No comments will be posted without a full name and location, see the policy.

Church of England set to lose a tenth of its clergy in five years

The Church of England is facing the loss of as many as one in ten paid clergy in the next five years and internal documents seen by The Times admit that the traditional model of a vicar in every parish is over.

The credit crunch and a pension funding crisis have left dioceses facing massive restructuring programmes. Church statistics show that between 2000 and 2013 stipendiary or paid clergy numbers will have fallen by nearly a quarter.

According to figures on the Church of England website, there will be an 8.3 per cent decrease in paid clergy in the next four years, from 8,400 this year to 7,700 in to 2013. This represents a 22.5 per cent decrease since 2000. If this trend continues in just over 50 years there will be no full-time paid clergy left in Britain’s 13,000 parishes serving 16,000 churches.

Jobs will instead be filled by unpaid part-timers, giving rise to fears about the quality of parish ministry. Combined with a big reduction in churchgoing, the figures will add weight to the campaign for disestablishment. Read more
No comments will be posted without a full name and location, see the policy.

Teenage boys to learn how to respect women in drive to tackle violence

A generation of youths who do not know how to treat women are to be targeted in a drive to tackle violence and abuse in teenage relationships, the Government announced today.

The campaign could also involve children as young as 5 being taught about “gender equality” as part of personal, social and health education that, from 2011, is to be a compulsory part of the national curriculum. Rules are also to be produced for how teachers should tackle “sexist, sexual and transphobic” bullying.

A strategy to tackle violence against women and girls published yesterday highlights the need for “attitudinal” change among teenagers in relationships. The move follows growing concern that some teenage boys are mistreating girls with verbal abuse, physical attacks and attempts to coerce them into having sex.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “Reaching teenagers who are embarking on early relationships to challenge their perceptions of what constitutes a healthy relationship is vital to preventing violence against women and girls.” Read more
No comments will be posted without a full name and location, see the policy.

Russian faith leaders call for calm as murdered priest is buried

A murdered Russian Orthodox priest was laid to rest in Moscow yesterday, amid fears of rising religious tensions between Christians and Muslims in the country. Father Daniil Sysoyev was shot dead inside his own church last week, in a killing that many suspect was by Islamic radicals.

Father Sysoyev was a controversial figure, even within the Orthodox Church. He was an active missionary, attempting to convert Muslims to Orthodoxy, and authored a number of books, including one warning Russian women against marrying Muslim men. He also posted a series of online sermons on YouTube dissecting the Islamic faith and making several incendiary claims about the religion.

Late last Thursday night, after the evening service, an intruder burst into Father Sysoyev's small church, located in a drab Moscow suburb. The killer was wearing a surgical mask, brandishing a pistol, and demanded to know where Sysoyev was. When the priest emerged, he was shot twice, in the head and neck, and later died in hospital. Read more
No comments will be posted without a full name and location, see the policy.

Martin Amis: the sexual revolution killed my sister Sally

The author's younger sister died in 2000, aged 46, after suffering for years from alcoholism and depression.

Amis said she had been crushed by the pressures he felt women had been subjected to ever since the idea of sex before marriage became the norm.

Society was still dealing with the fallout, he said, but women usually fared worse than men.

He said: "It's astonishingly difficult to find a decent deal between men and women and we haven't found it yet."

While women enjoyed more freedom than they did before 1970, he said, they were also more liable to suffer from the pressures the revolution exerted on them.

Sally could not cope with the sexual liberation it granted her, said Amis, 60.

"She was pathologically promiscuous," he told the Richmond Book Now Festival.

"She really had the mental age of 12 or 13 and I think she was terrified. I think what she was doing was seeking protection from men, but it went the other way, she was often beaten up, abused and she simply used herself up."

In the 1980s she married a wine merchant twice her age but the union lasted only six months. She had a baby daughter from another relationship Catherine, whom she gave up for adoption. In 1994 she suffered a stroke and the following year their father Kingsley Amis died, from which she never recovered.

She died of an unspecified infection in November 2000 after five days in intensive care. Read more
No comments will be posted without a full name and location, see the policy.

Leading article: Heavy hand of Rome

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has travelled to Rome to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of the late Dutch Cardinal Johannes Willebrands, a campaigner for the unification of Christianity. But when Dr Williams holds a private meeting with Pope Benedict XVI today, the mood is likely to be one of animosity, rather than ecumenicism.

Last month saw one of the most divisive acts by the Catholic Church in decades. The Pope unveiled an "apostolic constitution" which would allow practising Anglicans to join the Catholic Church. Under the new arrangement, Rome would even admit married Church of England clergy and allow entire congregations to continue using their traditional liturgy and prayer book. The Archbishop has been quietly criticising the Catholic move in recent days. But behind closed doors he ought to be more direct.

The Vatican claims that the invitation was entirely a response to requests from disgruntled Anglicans to be allowed to join the Catholic communion. But this affair looks more like an attempt by Vatican conservatives to exploit tensions within the Anglican Church over women bishops and gay priests for their own gain.

Tellingly, the Vatican's Council for Christian Unity played no part in devising the new arrangements. And Dr Williams was not informed of Rome's intentions until virtually the last minute. This whole business has served to undermine the Archbishop's authority in the midst of a bitter struggle for the very future of Anglicanism. Dr Williams should tell the Pontiff that there is nothing ecumenical about trying to poach congregations. And he should make clear that talks on a closer union of Anglicanism and Catholicism cannot continue while Rome engages in such unilateral power grabs. Read more
No comments will be posted without a full name and location, see the policy.