Desmond Tutu given $1.6m for being spiritual

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More exactly, he was awarded the Templeton Prize for “affirming life’s spiritual dimension”.

Last year the Dalai Lama won it. Someone should tell Richard Dawkins that there is big money to be made in “affirming life’s spiritual dimension”.

From here:

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has won the £1.1m ($1.6m) Templeton Prize for “affirming life’s spiritual dimension”.

Organisers said he was awarded the 2013 prize for his lifelong work advancing spiritual principles such as love and forgiveness that have helped to liberate people around the world.

Anglican-Lutheran Joint Assembly to meet in Ottawa

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The Anglican Church of Canada and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada are now holding joint synods; not unlike a conjoining of the RMS Titanic and MV Doña Paz.

Predictably, the conflab will eschew transcendent trivialities like the saving of souls in favour of “affordable housing and responsible resource extraction”.

From here:

April 04, 2013 – More than 800 Anglicans, Lutherans, and partners will gather at the Ottawa Convention Centre July 3 to 7, 2013, for a historic joint national meeting.

Inspired by the theme “Together for the love of the world,” members of the Anglican Church of Canada and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada will gather for worship and decision-making on areas of shared work, including mission and development.

Several key events will highlight the churches’ commitment to God’s mission in the world. Anglicans and Lutherans will be invited to make statements on two priority social justice issues: affordable housing and responsible resource extraction. On July 6, Anglican and Lutheran youth from Ottawa are to lead people at the assembly to Parliament Hill where they will participate in an act of public witness and worship.

Bishop Michael Ingham announces his retirement

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Read it all here:

Bishop Michael Ingham announced today he will be retiring from his position on August 31st, 2013.

“The Diocese of New Westminster has been at the forefront of positive change in the Church for decades” he said. “From the ordination of women, to support for indigenous peoples, to the dignity of gay and lesbian Christians, to inter-faith dialogue – it has been a privilege to serve a Diocese living and growing at some of the leading edges of the Anglican Church of Canada.”

The “positive change in the Church” remark is something of a mystery. Michael Ingham, by being the first Anglican bishop to authorise same-sex blessings, was instrumental in the rupturing of the Anglican Communion, a change about as positive as a magnitude 7 earthquake.

In his letter of resignation, he notes:

In my almost twenty years in episcopal orders I – together with many others in this Diocese – have borne witness in the Anglican Church of Canada to important principles central to the Christian Gospel. Our witness of faith frequently encountered strong religious opposition. Strangely, the secular world has been more supportive.

To congratulate oneself on actions which were opposed by the majority of Anglicans and applauded by most secularists seems an odd boast for a retiring Anglican bishop; isn’t it supposed to be the other way around?

To affirm his standing in Vanity Fair, Michael Ingham has been awarded an honorary degree:

Michael Ingham, Bishop of the Diocese of New Westminster, is the first Bishop in the worldwide Anglican Communion to authorize the blessing of same-sex unions. The degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, will be conferred on The Right Reverend Ingham on Friday, June 14 at the 2:30 pm ceremony.

Justin Welby thinks the church must disagree gracefully

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From here:

The Church of England must show it can manage disagreement “gracefully” over issues such as women bishops and gay marriage, the Archbishop of Canterbury has warned.

The Most Reverend Justin Welby said the Church faced a “challenge” to show the rest of society that its members can hold different views but still remain “gracefully and deeply committed to each other”.

“We need to understand reconciliation within the Church as the transformation of destructive conflict, not unanimity,” he said.

“It doesn’t mean we all agree, it is that we find ways of disagreeing, perhaps very passionately but loving each other deeply at the same time, gracefully and deeply committed to each other.

That is all very well for those who are adherents of the same faith and, thus, members of the same church. It is not the case for the division created by liberals who reinterpret the Bible to question the physical resurrection of Jesus, his virgin birth, his atoning sacrifice on the cross and, of course,  the accommodation of homosexual activity as something that can be blessed by the church.

Such liberals have established a new – or reanimated an old pagan – religion, one which they call “Christian” to deceive the unwary, but which, with its eco-babble, pre-eschatological utopia aspirations and sexual obsessions, has more in common with the Marxist-Leninist branch of a fertility cult than it does with orthodox Christianity.

With such, there is no disagreeing “gracefully.”

A ray of hope for the Church of England

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Most people think it is out of touch with society. There is nothing that drives people out of a church quite as effectively as a striving to be in touch with society.

From here:

More than two-thirds (69%) of the population believe that the Church of England is out of touch with society and half (54%) believe that it does a bad job of providing moral leadership. Almost half disagree with its stance on same-sex marriage.

I feel a rare moment of sympathy for atheist bloggers

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IslamistsIn Bangladesh, at least, where fanatical Islamists are demanding the arrest of atheist bloggers.

A belief system that can sustain itself only by forcibly silencing all opposition is necessarily false. Islamists are not the first to try this, of course, nor will they be the last; it’s just as well that, in the long run, it never works.

From here:

Tens of thousands of Islamic activists prayed on the streets of the Bangladeshi capital today during a rally calling for the introduction of blaspemy laws and the restoration of a caretaker government.

Members of the Islami Andolan Bangladesh are demanding the arrest of ‘atheist bloggers who insulted Islam’ and to pass laws punishing those who ‘insulted Islam in the parliament’.

They have announced plans to ‘lay siege’ to the office of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on April 25 if their demands are not met.

I think I like the new Pope

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Pope-FeetThere is a knack in doing this kind of thing unpretentiously and the Pope seems to have it:

Pope Francis washed and kissed the feet of dozens of young prisoners in a Holy Thursday ritual in a gesture of ‘love and service’.

He continued a tradition he began as archbishop of Buenoes Aires by holding a Mass in the Casal del Marmo facility in Rome, where 46 young men and women currently are detained.

Two of the 12 were young women, a remarkable choice given that the rite re-enacts Jesus’ washing of the feet of his male disciples.

[….]

‘This is a symbol, it is a sign -washing your feet means I am at your service,’ Francis told the youngsters. ‘Help one another. This is what Jesus teaches us. This is what I do. And I do it with my heart. I do this with my heart because it is my duty, as a priest and bishop I must be at your service.’

Michael Pollesel to be coadjutor bishop in Diocese of Uruguay after all

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Michael PolleselThe Diocese of Uruguay is a liberal diocese in a conservative province, a misalignment of predispositions that prompted it to ask to be moved to a more simpatico province; the request  was denied.

The diocese of Uruguay says feels “abandoned and unsupported” after the standing committee of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) turned down its request to change provinces.

The diocese, which is part of the province of the Southern Cone, has asked that it be transferred to the province of Brasil, which it says is “more compatible” in terms of theology, mission and philosophy.

Canada’s Archdeacon Michael Pollesel was voted in as coadjutor bishop in the Diocese of Uruguay, but the appointment was rejected twice by the Southern Cone’s house of bishops, possibly because of this:

A source close to the situation told VOL that the issue of women priests and the liberal proclivities of Pollesel and his association with the ultra-liberal Anglican Church of Canada were deciding factors.

Now, the election has been ratified by the house of bishops; perhaps they hope to convert the new bishop:

The Anglican Province of the Southern Cone has reconsidered the Diocese of Uruguay’s appeal and has voted to ratify the election of Archdeacon Michael Pollesel as coadjutor bishop.

The decision came 10 months after the province’s House of Bishops rejected Pollesel’s election. The Uruguayan diocesan synod had appealed the decision, but “for technical canonical reasons the form of the original appeal was not valid” and had to be presented again, said Southern Cone Presiding Bishop Hector Zavala in a press release.

Diocese of Huron hires secular fund raising consultants

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A church employing secular fund raisers to keep itself financially viable is a harbinger of approaching doom. It is an admission that the transcendent principles on which the organisation rests no longer sufficiently motivate its members to part with their cash – probably because the leaders themselves no longer believe them.

In the case of the Diocese of Huron, the fund-raising effort is being disguised by the epithet “Renew”, a word that, when used by a church, usually means spiritual renewal not bank balance renewal.

From here (page 2):

Diocesan Council approved on February 28, 2013, at a Sub-Council meeting, a plan to position the Diocese and direct it forward as Renew will be launched this year at Synod.

The Diocese has been engaged over the last six months in a feasibility and quiet phase study, preparing the Diocese to launch Renew for our parishes. This time also allowed the Diocese to work toward funding costs for materials, planning and labour to provide for this launch of the program.

Diocesan Sub-Council approved the establishment of a new Renew Committee, which is now charged with directing and managing Renew in the Diocese. Part of their mandate is to now recommend consultants to actively work with parishes and the Diocese in raising funds in support of our established needs as a Church.

The Diocese has now engaged the contracted services of Ms. Amanda Gellman and Ms. Lynda McGregor of our Diocese as professional consultants to help lead Renew in Huron.

No Cross, no Christianity

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Giles Fraser is an Anglican clergyman who doesn’t much like evangelicals or Holy Trinity Brompton or any church that is large and successful or Alpha. He thinks that people who have “a personal relationship” with Jesus are creepy.

He reserves a particular dislike, though, for those who believe that Jesus’ death on the cross was a moment of triumph:

Which is why, for the worst sort of Cheesus-loving evangelicals, the cross of Good Friday is actually celebrated as a moment of triumph. This is theologically illiterate. Next week, in the run up to Easter, Christianity goes into existential crisis. It fails.

The disciples run away, unable to cope with the impossible demands placed upon them. The hero they gave up everything to follow is exposed to public ridicule and handed over to Roman execution. And the broken man on the cross begins to fear that God is no longer present.

I suspect what is really rubbing him up the wrong way is that evangelicals believe that, in his time of suffering on the cross, Jesus took upon himself the sins of the whole world – even those of Giles Fraser. He bore the wrath of God the Father for those sins so that we wouldn’t have to, thereby reconciling us to the Father once and for all. How can such a Redemption not be a triumph?

Theological liberals like Giles Fraser don’t like to think about the wrath of God, the innate sinfulness of man and the fact that a holy, just God must punish sin. Theirs is a sub-Christian faith, empty, meaningless, incoherent and worthy of derision.

Without the triumph of the Cross, there is no Christianity.